PA 

3879 
Ms" 




Book- A/\ 5 — 



/ 
REPLY 



TO 



"REMARKS 



ON 

MR. MITCHELLS EDITION 

OF 

THE COMEDIES OF ARISTOPHANES 

BY 

GEORGE JOHN KENNEDY, M. A. 

FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE." 
BY 

T. MITCHELL, A.M. 

LATE FELLOW OF SIDNEY SUSSEX COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 



Omoi Jaws rodfl on his horse Leo, armed after the manner of the 
Huns, with a two-edged iword on his left, and a one-edged one on his right 
tide." Weber and Scott'fl Northern Illustrations. 






OXFORD: 

Printed by T. Combe, Printer to the University, 

FOR JOHN HENRY PARKER: 
JOHN MURRAY, LONDON: 
J. un> J. J. DEIOHTON, CAMBRIDGE. 

MDCCCXLI. 






205449 
'13 



REPLY, &c. 



lF there is any person who feels an aversion to literary 
controversy in every shape, it is the humble individual who 
now ventures to address the reader. The time necessarily 
consumed in such exhibitions, the angry feelings too often 
engendered by them, and the known distaste of the public 
for controversies, in which words rather than things are the 
subject of dispute — and on words all scholastic controversies 
must more or less turn — are reasons more than sufficient for 
explaining the origin of such a feeling, and the resolutions 
which ought to grow out of it ; viz. to listen attentively and 
respectfully to all such remarks as the general and recog- 
nized organs of criticism offer ; to profit by what is valuable 
in such remarks ; to dismiss from the mind what seems of 
a different character, and leave the rest to a Public at once 
intelligent and impartial, and who seldom fail to place all 
Mich matters on a just and equitable footing. Whether any 
thing will be found in the sequel of these pages to justify 
a departure from such resolutions, is in the same spirit left to 
the candour of the public to decide. 

I presume that I am addressing those who know that for 
some few years past I have been engaged in preparing, — not 
an entire edition of Aristophanes for the use of young stu- 
dents, but — something more than half of his remaining come- 
dies for that purpose. The distinction, it will soon be seen, is 
not without its consequences, and I therefore point to it as 

B 2 



early as possible. Whatever might have been the whole of 
my reasons for engaging in a task at once so difficult and 
delicate, I can most truly and sincerely affirm, that any sense 
of complete competency for such an undertaking was one 
that never for a single moment crossed my thoughts. Having, 
however, been induced rather by the persuasions of others, 
than any suggestions of my own mind, to set about the 
undertaking, I determined to watch closely the effect pro- 
duced by the publication of the first play. If the satisfaction 
expressed seemed rather to outweigh the censure, I should 
take it for a signal to continue the publication ; if, on the 
contrary, the censure exceeded the commendation, my deter- 
mination was to drop the undertaking instantly. My first 
attempt having been placed before the public, the censure 
offered was but little ; the commendation such as I had never 
for a moment ventured to anticipate. In one or two quarters, 
indeed, the commendation assigned seemed so utterly out of 
proportion with what had been done, that for some time 
I thought my sight must have deceived me. On rubbing, 
however, those organs by which vision is conveyed, the ob- 
stinate types seemed determined on maintaining their place, 
and I was finally constrained to acknowledge that so the 
types stood ; much more indeed to the credit of kindness than 
of judgment on the part of those who had thought fit so 
to place them. " They will know me better," thought I to 
myself, " and have to retrace their steps, when a second 
attempt comes before them." But a second and third play 
was published, and still there seemed the same disposition 
to befriend the undertaking, the same reluctance to condemn. 
A mind, however, diffident of its own powers (and in so 
wide a field as that of scholarship what mind can fail to feel 
many moments of deep diffidence ?) still finds causes for dis- 
trust ; and distrust gradually whispered, " These commen- 
dations are all of home-growth, and who does not wish to 
bolster up his own countryman, wherever it can be done 
with the least show of propriety ; but will continental scholars 



respond to such encomiums ? Will they not rather, if such 
slender performances should ever reach them, scatter at once 
both lauders and the lauded to the winds?" But here too 
I was agreeably to be disappointed. If there is any one of 
the continental scholars more respected for his knowledge 
of the Greek dramatic writings generally, and for those 
of Aristophanes in particular, it is, I need not say, the learned 
Dindorf. When I found therefore such a man stepping out 
of his way to compliment a person utterly unknown to him, 
and express in warm terms the satisfaction which he had 
derived from my attempts to make Aristophanes better 
known to young students, it did appear to me that I had 
received sufficient sanction for continuing my task, and two 
more plays were in consequence added to my former stock. 
On each of these plays I could, from the nature of their 
respective subjects, have occupied a large portion of man's 
ordinary life : both, however, were completed after a fashion ; 
and for some time I reposed under the agreeable supposition 
that the conductors of our great public schools were in pos- 
session of what I understood they had long been in want of, 
but which their own incessant occupations did not allow 
them to supply — a safe text of five of the most important of 
the Aristophanic plays, any verbal inaccuracies in the notes 
to which (and how was it possible that such should not 
occur, whether from inadvertence or ignorance, in so large 
an undertaking I) could be corrected by oral instruction, and 
deficiencies supplied by their own more abundant stores : 
from this agreeable dream I was soon to be roughly disturbed. 
On one of the sharpest of those sharp mornings which the 
late severe weather furnished, (and which had laid low much 
stouter men than myself,) it appears to have occurred to the a 
rev. George John Kennedy, fellow of St. John's college, Cam- 
bridge, that in all this matter, scholars, both home and con- 
s' This title docs uot staud before Mr. Kennedy's name in his pamphlet, 
but it was, I believe, prefixed to his advertisements ; at all events I have ascer- 
tained that it might have stood before both. 

n 3 



tinental, had been labouring under some strange delusion; 
that their commendations had been bestowed on a rank im- 
postor, who, so far from being able to conduct an edition of 
Aristophanes, could not indite a single page, which did not 
evince at once a general want of judgment, as well as igno- 
rance of the Greek language ; that a whole race of students 
were in consequence likely to go to their graves ignorant of 
the rules of Kiihner and Matthiae, and that as no other 
person seemed inclined to interfere in so momentous an 
affair, it became him, the rev. George John Kennedy, to take 
the task upon himself, and prevent the public from being 
further deluded by this strange conspiracy. In what manner 
my assailant provided himself for the exploit, the motto b in 
my title-page gives sufficient intimation. 

It is almost unnecessary to say, that a person who suddenly 
steps forward to arraign another's want of judgment, has need 
at the very outset to look closely after his own ; and certainly, 
when in Mr. Kennedy's pamphlet, of the size of which I shall 
presently speak, I found the first two or three pages devoted 
to severe castigations of two such persons as Xenophon and 
Mitford, instead of commencing at once upon the more imme- 
diate object of his vengeance, his judgment seemed to me 
about as questionable as if a person, having undertaken to 
demolish the humble artificer of what is termed the emperor 
of China's sauce, should first think it necessary to assail the 
emperor himself, monarch of three hundred millions of sub- 
jects, lord of the celestial empire, first cousin to the moon, 
and so forth. And what offence had the fellow-pupil of Plato 
(of Mr. Mitford I shall have future occasion to speak) com- 
mitted in the eyes of Mr. Kennedy? or rather, what language 
of mine had made it incumbent on Mr. Kennedy to degrade 

b « And that motto,' exclaims Mr. Kennedy, c furnishes another proof of your 
carelessness in quotation; for my copy of the " Northern Illustrations" reads 
JValther y\\o\ George John.* * True, Mr. Kennedy, and mine reads the same; 
but being a man of peace, and unwilling that my readers should for a moment 
opiuc that it was myself who came forward so murderously armed, I felt that no 
sin was committed in making a slight substitution.' 



the reputation of that eminent person, before he proceeded 
utterly to demolish mine ? I had somewhere, it seems, spoken 
of him as a man of " comprehensive" mind. Does Mr. Kennedy 
then consider Xenophon a man of " incomprehensive" mind ? 
Let us bestow a moment's attention on this second specimen of 
Mr. Kennedy's judgment ; both, be it observed, occurring in 
the opening pages of a pamphlet not exceeding thirty-two 
pages. The first circumstance in which we find Xenophon 
engaged, after leaving the school of Socrates, is participancy 
in a military undertaking, fraught with more importance, and 
likely to be connected with more perils and difficulties, than 
any which that day had yet witnessed. By a train of circum- 
stances unnecessary to mention, this young man, — for young 
he yet was, — instead of being a mere subordinate in this 
enterprise, becomes suddenly the head and front of its most 
important portion. It is not for a person like me to know 
whether the great Captain of our own day has ever read the 
Anabasis, (it is not improbable that he has read it both in the 
original language and in translation,) but I think that he, 
while perusing it, would admit that the young officer sur- 
mounted his various and complicated difficulties in a way in 
which nothing but a mind of the most comprehensive order 
could have enabled him to surmount them. My epithet 
therefore would not have been so much at fault, had the 
case rested here ; but did it do so ? To narrate his exploits 
in a manner as graceful as he had performed them effec- 
tively — to offer subsequently to the world models of his- 
torical and biographical composition — to give a specimen of 
Table-talk in the person of his Socrates, such as the Table-talk 
of Selden or Coleridge has certainly not surpassed — to ori- 
ginate, as he also did originate, that species of historical 
romance, which it has been the glory of sir Walter Scott 
to complete — above all, to furnish the most beautiful code 
of morals which antiquity ever exhibited, and which Chris- 
tianity has only exceeded by placing the principles of morality 
on grounds which heathen antiquity could not supply — to do 
all this, while engaged in some of the most important trans- 

"4 



8 

actions of the day, and yet find time to instruct husbandmen 
on subjects of agriculture, women on domestic economy, 
huntsmen on the sports of the field, and even grooms and 
kennel-boys on their respective occupations, and to accomplish 
each of these in the way most appropriate to the topic imme- 
diately under hand : the person who denies a comprehensive 
mind to such a man as this, seems to me to come under one 
of two predicaments ; either he has a mind of such pro- 
digious grasp himself, that what appears great to others 
appears small to him, or he labours under a degree of over- 
weening vanity and self-opinion, of which the sooner he 
divests himself, the better. Mr. Kennedy may, for aught 
I know, be able to do all that Xenophon has done, and much 
more (and till he has so done, a very awkward soubriquet 
may chance to fasten to his name) : but at present he is only 
known for a fierce assault upon so humble a person as myself: 
but that perhaps for the same reason that a show-elephant is 
made to pick up a pin, before he displays the mightier 
wonders of his trunk. With these preliminary observations 
on Mr. Kennedy's own display of judgment, I come to that 
portion of his labours where his censure throws itself into two 
formal divisions, through both which I am bound to follow 
him. ' An edition of Aristophanes,' says my learned assailant, 
' " with notes critical and explanatory, adapted to the use of 
schools and universities," requires two qualities preeminently, 
neither of which is possessed by Mr. Mitchell ; accurate 
scholarship and good judgment. Of his deficiency in the 
latter it would be superfluous to cite particular instances; 
almost every page will furnish proof.' On reckoning up the 
pages of my five plays of Aristophanes, I find that they 
amount in number to 1777; Mr. Kennedy's, as has been 
before observed, amount to 32 ; with some ten of which 
I have no personal concern, they being devoted either to 
attacks upon other people, or to learned speculations of 
Mr. Kennedy himself. ' True,' says Mr. K., ' but the size 
of my pamphlet has little to do with the matter ; and upon 
recollection, as my concluding quotation was introduced to 



9 

enlighten you from the pages of Ariosto, so it would have 
been as well had my preliminary motto (though the actual 
one is not amiss) enlightened you from those of Dante. 

And better to denote his littleness, 
The writing must be letters maim'd, that speak 
Much in a narrow space.* 

Cary's Dante, Cant. 19. Parad/ 

What Dante's ' lettere mozze' exactly mean, I do not profess 
to understand, nor does his excellent translator inform me ; 
how Mr. Kennedy can maim and mangle in a narrow space, 
the reader will understand, before he comes to the end of 
these pages. And now first as to the want of judgment, on 
which Mr. Kennedy so severely arraigns me, but which 
charge he dismisses almost as soon as made : and why ? I would 
not willingly misrepresent my Hun, but I suspect from im- 
patience to make use of those two falchions which I have 
placed at his side, and on subjects on which his grammatical 
tendencies evidently set far more importance than on judgment, 
or any other faculty of the human mind. As my character 
for judgment, how r ever, is of somewhat more importance to 
me than it is to Mr. Kennedy, the reader will, I am sure, 
excuse me for going a little further into the matter. 

Judgment, whether in taking up an ancient author for 
editorship, or in any other proceeding, is generally evinced 
by pursuing a fit object by fit means ; and if any deviation is 
made from the paths usually followed in such a pursuit, by 
shewing that time and circumstances famish fair cause for 
making such a deviation. That an edition of Aristophanes 
for the use of schools and universities was not wanted, Mr. 
Kennedy has not ventured to affirm: how indeed could he? 
The rubbish which the prejudices of past ages had allowed to 
accumulate around that much calumniated writer, because 
they chose to view his works through the medium of their 
times, and not through his, had of late years been wholly 
8Wep1 away. Instead of a private libeller and satirist, scatter- 
ing his darts at random, he was found upon inquiry to be a 
writer pursuing a high and recognised function, as much 



10 

tinder the sanction of the state, as the highest magistrate 
within it: instead of being an originator of ribaldry and 
indecency, it was incontrovertibly proved that he held his 
office by that very tenure; that such matter, however 
offensive to us, was as legitimate a portion of a Dionysiac 
festival among the Athenians, as the performances of oratorios 
and sacred music used to be a portion of the Lent season 
among ourselves ; but that in his own person he was so far 
from yielding to this accustomed practice, that in an early 
period of his career he had made the strongest efforts to rid 
himself of such a thraldom, and that if he finally submitted 
to the feelings and dictates of his times, it was because by 
so yielding, and only by so yielding, he could operate to 
the general benefit of the age, as his lofty genius dictated. 
As to the trash about his attacks on the Socratic school 
and their founder, all or most of that now belongs, I believe, 
to that respectable class of persons who still believe that 
the blood does not circulate, and that the sun revolves 
round the earth; and who otherwise smell of things born 
before Cronus and the moon. (Aristoph. Nub.) But in 
return for such drawbacks, what a flood of light thrown upon 
the manners and institutions of antiquity, or rather what an 
utter darkness and confusion, unless his pages are at hand to 
lead us through the chaos ! Would public preceptors, even 
under such circumstances, have been justified in withholding 
any longer such a guide from their pupils ? But the case by 
no means rested here ; circumstances, to which I must now 
allude, oblige me to ask, whether they would not even desert 
their duty to the public, by withholding such a writer from 
their pupils, provided those objections had been removed, 
which had once made the task unpalatable to them ? 

To any person conversant with general history, it would 
almost seem as if certain revolutions of time brought with 
them their moral as well as physical visitations, and that 
nations had their day of phrensy as well as individuals. 
The great lunacy of Aristophanes's time was the idea that 
( the many' are more competent to be the administrators of 



11 

all matters politic than * the few ;' and that in public life 
numbers are to do what in domestic life is not permitted ; 
the principle having never yet, I believe, been promulgated, 
that children and menials conjoined are to supersede paternal 
and maternal sway, and to be omnipotent over the master 
and mistress of the establishment. Need I say where and when 
this phrensy-fit, after a long sleep, again revived, and that 
though not raging as at its first paroxysm, the disease itself 
has any thing but disappeared ? Is it then of no concern, that 
those whose future duty it will be in a variety of ways to 
deal with such a malady, should at the earliest period, and 
from every possible source, be made clearly acquainted with 
the various symptoms of it ? Now in no writings have those 
symptoms been so fully and so perspicuously pourtrayed as in 
those of the great comic poet of Athens, and the first test of 
judgment in an editor of him, was clearly how to deal most ad- 
vantageously with the large materials which he has bequeathed 
to us for the purpose wanted. To separate the pure from the 
less pure, (a separation which no original fault of the author had 
rendered necessary,) — to arrange what was left into as much of 
a general and systematic plan as possible — to give clear and 
distinct views of the several branches into which that general 
plan diverged — to stop all cavil against the leading source of 
so much valuable information, by shewing through almost 
innumerable references, that what Aristophanes had said in a 
lighter form, graver writers had fully confirmed in a serious 
one — seemed to be the primary step of an editor, who wished 
to do his duty with judgment and efficiency. And that step 
taken, what best followed as the second \ To submit those 
Qeral views to the consideration of the learned persons for 
whom principally such a task had been undertaken, and respect- 
fully inquire whether a work so conducted would be in general 
accordance with their wishes. And surely the pcison who 
took both tl ps did not deserve to have his judgment ><> 

severely called in question as has been done by 3 Jr. Kennedy 
in the case of the present writer ; for that both these steps 
were taken by him, a document appended to these pagl S will 



12 

fully testify. That document was widely circulated, not only 
in halls and colleges, but in every quarter where it was thought 
that any beneficial opinion on the subject could possibly be 
elicited. Disingenuously as Mr. Kennedy has treated me, — 
and not merely in one or two instances, as will hereafter be 
shewn, — I readily acquit him of having ever seen that docu- 
ment, because he must have felt that the chief instances which 
he adduces of want of judgment on my part in the arrange- 
ment of my materials, are by that document cut from under 
him, and that his censures fall not merely upon myself, but 
involve in some degree those learned persons, who, apprised 
of the nature of my plans, rather urged me to the execution 
of them, than condemned them at the outset. Four of the 
Aristophanic plays,it is evident from that document,were wholly 
excluded from my plan, and among them the 'Pax:' why? 
because, though a pleasing and even beautiful play in itself, 
it offered no prominent object for investigation. I considered it 
therefore as coming under that portion of my Prospectus, which 
allowed me to insert in part, what I did not purpose to do in 
extenso ; and what then becomes of Mr. Kennedy's cavil about 
* inserting whole scenes from one play as an appendix to 
another ?' In my edition of the ' Wasps,' I stopt short at the 
Parabasis : why ? not because my fastidious taste, as Mr. Ken- 
nedy insinuates, revolted at a few coarse jokes in the concluding 
scenes, but for a more important reason ; because at that 
Parabasis the vital principle of the play itself, and which, as a 
play, makes it more valuable than almost any thing which 
antiquity has bequeathed to us, ceases : and in what did that 
extreme value consist ? I answer, in the insight it gives us 
into the workings of the ancient courts of law, and the 
information thus gained, where the essence of the ancient 
democracies lay : information which I was the more anxious 
to press upon the student's attention, because the play itself 
had been comparatively neglected ; the humour lying at the 
surface having indeed been fully comprehended, but the poli- 
tical information which lay at the bottom, having escaped 
detection. Whether the grammatical inferences which I shall 



13 

subsequently derive from the workings of these dicasteria^ or 
courts of law, — and which, if correctly founded, will put in 
jeopardy some of those grammatical subtleties on which Mr. 
Kennedy no doubt at present prides himself, — may leave him 
satisfied that I did not proceed farther with the ' Wasps,' or 
even lead him to wish that I had not meddled with the play 
at all, it is not for me to say : I have only at present to add, 
that having inserted in my text all that was politically 
valuable, and having thrown into the Appendix the lively 
scene, which sheds so much light on the convivial habits of 
the ancients, I thought that I had preserved as much of the 
original drama as the conductors of schools would wish to 
receive at my hands. 

But while acting, — not incautiously, I trust, it will now be 
seen, as to my general plan of operations — did I exhibit an 
entire want of caution in conducting its details ? — and Mr. 
Kennedy's pleasantries, such as they are, about my large 
extracts from Athenaeus, bring me to this part of my subject. 
It is obvious that I could not here address myself to Halls 
and Colleges ; and I regret to say that my acquaintance has 
not lain much among the learned ; but such learned friends 
as I did possess, I asked for their advice, and even some, whom 
I did not personally know, I ventured to consult. ' Aye,' in- 
terrupts Mr. Kennedy, ' and a little exercise of common 
judgment would at once have shewn, in what such general 
applications would terminate. 1 And here indeed Mr. Ken- 
nedy is right. ' Your author may do as much harm as good,' 
said one ; ' be as cxpurgatory therefore as possible.' ' I 
hate castigated editions,' said another, * and am by no 
means sure that it is advisable to wrap up boys in cotton, and 
educate them like little misses, who in their teens smell of 
bread and butter, as Lord Byron writes, and out of them arc 
meant, as Shakspcarc writes, " to suckle babes, and chronicle 
small beer." Give the lads fair play, and trust something to 
their own good sense and right feelings.' ' Beware of poli- 
tics,' said a third, ' or you will bring a host of hornets about 
your ears.' c Make the most of your author's rich and racy 



14 

political workings/ cried a fourth ; ' bring Democracy's nose 
to the grind-stone-, or your Aristophanes will be a dish as 
sapless and tasteless as a pumpkin.' — But my correspondents 
had further to be questioned ; { and my notes — must they be 
in English or in Latin V ' Latin is the rule,' said one : 
' Latin was the rule/ said another, Q but the tide has 
turned; use your own discretion.' ' Have nothing to do 
with Latin notes/ exclaimed a third ; ' the causes which 
originally called for them are gone by — the continental 
scholars are dropping them fast — Latin is not talked at vestries 
and parochial meetings, and it is with English, and pretty 
stiff English, that our young Academics will hereafter have to 
deal — you will smile perhaps when I add, that the mark of 
the beast c is on Latin — but smile, or even laugh, if you will — 

c This expression will require some explanation to young readers. It is 
almost unnecessary to say, that the Sacred Writers not only express themselves 
in the language, but continually refer to the customs of the days in which they 
wrote. When the Apocalypse was written, it was not unusual then, as in former 
days, to express names by numbers : thus Thouth, or the Egyptian Mercury, was 
signified by the number 1218 ; the name of Jupiter as *H 'ApxVi or The begin- 
ning of things, by the number 737, &c. &c. In the same manner, when the 
great Anti-Christian power is described in the Apocalypse, and after the usual 
language of prophecy is described as a Beast, (but widely different both in name 
and signification from the four fwo, which stand about the Eternal throne,) the 
number 666 is assigned — for the purpose, I presume, of avoiding any direct allu- 
sion to the Roman empire — as its name, and the * wisdom' of the true Church is 
solemnly called upon to investigate what name is implied in those numerals. 
The sagacity of Irenseus first discovered that the letters in the word Lateinos 
exactly contain those numerals ; and those who consider the Roman Catholic 
church to be the Beast of the Apocalypse, have not been slow to observe 
the propriety of this interpretation ; ' for that Church,' say they, * latinizes in 
every thing- Mass, prayers, hymns, litanies, canons, decretals, bulls, are con- 
ceived in Latin. The papal councils speak Latin. Women themselves pray in 
Latin. Nor is the Scripture read in any other language under popery than 
Latin : wherefore the Council of Trent commanded -the vulgar Latin to be the 
only authentic version. Nor do their doctors doubt to prefer it to the Hebrew 
and Greek text itself, which was written by the prophets and apostles. In short 
all things are Latin ; the pope having communicated his language to the people 
under his dominion, as the mark * and character of his empire.' Bishop Newton, 

* I am sorry to see the beast-m&vk on Mr. Wordsworth's excellent little Gram- 
mar «in usum scholarum.' As the learned compiler evidently hesitates between an 
English and a Latin dress, why not oblige students by giving a double edition, 
in English as well as in Latin ? 



15 

believe me the true church is yet in the d wilderness, and 
the day may not be far distant, when if not obliged to 
write Latin notes to Classics, we may have to deal with some- 
thing infinitely more important in e Latin : no, no : abide by 
your mother-tongue, and leave Lucretius, Horace, and Cicero 
to keep up the Latin tongue, as they will do, till Latin and 
all other tongues come to an end in this world.' * Once 
more, my dear brethren in us, — What shall be the form and 
fashion of these notes V ' It has been the rule — and for rea- 
sons which need not be explained — to give them as hard and 
dry, as the remainder biscuit after a seven years' voyage : — 
look abroad, and see whether some change may not be 
desirable on this point.' 

I did look abroad, and what met my eyes and my ears I 
From the palace to the cottage-gate the word was, ' Edu- 

d In prophetic language, a term apparently not of local, but of general appli- 
cation ; impyling a state of trial under whatever circumstances, whether of pros- 
perity, or the reverse. In the Apocalypse it implies that * time, times, and half 
time,' or in other words the 1260 years, during which the c faith and patience' of 
the true Church is to be tried by seeing a false church by her side, professing 
many doctrines as purely Christian as her own, yet presenting this remarkable 
phaenomeuon ; that whenever the opportunity offered, it has exercised more 
spiritual tyranny over the sister church, and shed more blood of its members, 
thau anyheathen power, Romau, Saracenic, orTurkish, ever did: necessitating as 
it were in the Apocalyptic writer declarations of the most solemn ** and atfectiug 
kind, that neither ' faith' nor * patience' may falter under a dispensation of 
Providence at times so appalling and confounding, and which, had it not been 
distinctly foretold and accounted for, might have overwhelmed both Christian 
1 faith' and i patience.* 

e ' During the reign of Queen Mary, the two Acts of Parliament which had 
authorized the use of an English Liturgy, called the second Prayer Book of 
King Edward VI., were repealed, and the Latin Liturgies were restored according 
to the popish forms of worship.' The Churchman's Almanack. See also the first 
four chapters in Archdeacon Berens's excellent little work on the History of the 
( hurch of England Prayer Book. 

** See more particularly Rcv.xiv. 9 — 13, where the latter verse is Applied (and 
I think justly) by bishop Newton to great reformers in the church from popish 
errors. That the unusual word anafrrl does not bear the sense of from henceforth, 
which the learned prelate ascribes to it in commou with the English translation, 
the observations of more recent lexicographers have fully shewn. According to 
Schleusner, Bretschneider,Rose (edition of Parkhurst) &c.,it expresses the perfect 
and complete happiness of those who die the deaths of such reformers. So 
Aristoph. Plut. 388. airapr\ ir\ovTuv y to be completely rich. (Cf. Lex. Bek. 
Anecd. p. 418.) 



16 

cate !' From the peer to the peasant the cry was ' Read !' 
Through the length and breadth of the land one pass-word 
arose, c Knowledge is power, and power shall be knowledge : 
prove to me that you possess the first, and with doffed cap 
and bent knee I put the other willingly into your hands : 
but if I find you wanting in this new element of my worship, 
beware lest Institutions which at present I most deeply 
prize and reverence, become gradually the sport of winds.' 
Could language like this sink deep into the ears of solitary 
scholars, and have no corresponding effect on the minds 
of those to whom the flower of our youth is entrusted — that 
youth, who at some future day must have, or ought to have, 
the guidance of those by whom such language is held ? Wiser 
and more reflecting minds than that of Mr. Kennedy, said, or 
seemed to me to say, c A new era has suddenly come upon us, 
how are we to deal with it ? sciences, as attractive as they are 
novel, are growing up every where around us, and no exer- 
tion is spared to put them indiscriminately into the hands of 
all classes — how shall that literature which once used to form 
almost exclusively the education of the higher classes come 
most safely into collision with these sciences? The writings 
of antiquity originally reached us in a form, which made the 
rectifying of their texts a matter of the first necessity : whole 
centuries have been spent upon the task ; and thus by degrees 
has grown up a department of literature, most honourable 
indeed to the human mind for the industry and acuteness dis- 
played in it, but at the same time difficult of attainment from 
its variety and almost boundless extent, and not a little repul- 
sive to those who do not possess the peculiar frame of mind 
requisite for such attainment. Shall we, by too exclusively 
exacting this secondary branch of learning, give the primary 
one a dress, which brings it into dangerous contrast with stu- 
dies of an easier and more inviting character ; or shall we, by 
rendering erudition as easy of attainment and as attractive as 
possible, render competition with other sciences more easy, 
and leave time for the attainment of both ? And will not 
the purposes even of a severer erudition be eventually served 



17 

by such a proceeding ? Never perhaps was the world more 
fitted or inclined to relish the great works of antiquity in 
themselves than at the present moment. Taste— feeling — 
imagination — all those great faculties of the mind, by which 
excellence in literature is appreciated, are, as it were, staple 
commodities of the day : — let us put then the golden fruits of 
antiquity in as easy a form as possible into their hands, without 
exhibiting ourselves as fiery dragons guarding the passes to 
those fruits, and exacting harsh and ungrateful doles before we 
allow of approach to them. Will not a taste of the fish in due 
time bring a taste for the sauce also, and verbal criticism 
augment its admirers in the end, as much as it loses them at the 
commencement ? How many years can in fact elapse, before 
ignorance of either branch of literature will be other than a 
deep reproach to any person who makes the least pretension to 
being a man of fetters, or who ranks above the well-informed 
of the humbler classes V — It was, I can most sincerely say, in 
deference to such workings of the public mind — as well 
learned as unlearned — and in an anxious wish to make ancient 
literature, not merely an object of present Academic pursuit, 
but a source of future and permanent delight, that a consider- 
able class of notes was framed, which again brings my judg- 
ment under the censure of Mr. Kennedy. That some of them 
stand in a form not exactly suited to schools, nor, it may be, 
even to Universities, (though of this I am not f certain,) I 
readily admit ; but may I be allowed to add, that I did not look 

t The only editor who has dealt fairly with the question of ttge, is, I think, a 
receul editor of Sophocles, the German scholar Neue. Master of a large academy, 
and, as a German, of course a psychologist, the learned preceptor appears to have 
caught up a numher of his pupils, and examined them closely as to their literary 
needs. ■ And what may you want ?' he demands of a boy of thirteen. * Want,' 
says the struggling urchin, ' I want a Duke's ball to be sure, and to knock 
Gottfried Hermann out at first bowlings.' * And you ?' — a boy one year older is 
addressed — ' Ah, sir, your kindness leaves us uothing to want ; but if you could 
allow me a tail-coat — Ach ! mein Gott ! what a swell Frederic Scholl makes in 
his !' ' And what may you require ?' says the psychologist to a reverend senior of 
seventeen. ■ I require to be treated like a man; and therefore don't be shy of 
your erudition, or any thing else ; but act in the spirit of Moliere — " Comprenez- 
vous tout cela?" u Non ; mais faites comme si je le comprenois." ' Now 
taking Moliere and human nature for my guides — and they arc nearly one and 
the same — I am not sure that my notes are so much amiss, even for my youngest 

C 



18 

to schools and universities for all my readers? Persons of an age 
much more advanced than belong to either, and among them 
men of no small literary eminence, but who, as the phrase is, 
had laid their learning a little on the shelf, had told me how 
happy they should be to renew their acquaintance with Greek 
and Aristophanes, if the latter could be put into their hands 
in a shape more accessible than that of Brunck : and could 
the honour of numbering such persons among my readers be 
without some effect upon the nature of my labours ? Even 
Mr. Kennedy is pleased to admit that some of these notes are 
neither uninstructive nor s unamusing ; but when he adds that 
they are misplaced, he takes for granted that which is the 
very point at issue. Had any such observations reached me 
from quarters, to which I was bound to pay the utmost 
deference, such notes would have been instantly discon- 
tinued, and with them, I may add, another class of notes, 
to which I attach infinitely more importance, and which if 
Mr. Kennedy does not absolutely censure, he points to with 
something very much approaching to a sneer ; I mean those 
notes, the object of which was to recall the thoughts occa- 
sionally to those Sacred Writings, to the aid of which all our 
classical studies ought to be made, I think, more or less subser- 
vient. With a few remarks on this class of notes, my observations 
on Mr. Kennedy's first charge against me will come to a close. 
That such a body of notes had been contemplated by me at 
the outset of my undertaking, is evinced by the document to 
which the reader has been already referred. Much doubt, I 
was aware, existed among scholars, as to the propriety of 

pupils. Academic youth feel, I believe, far more acutely, reason more justly, and 
may be left to their own discretion more safely, than Mr. Kennedy gives them 
credit for. 

g When Mr. Kennedy brings some of these notes into the same category with 
the c Imaginary Conversations' of Savage Landor, and hints at a separate publi- 
cation of them, he does me an honour, which I did not expect at any person's 
hands, much less at his. Many such notes, and of a larger form, have been sub- 
tracted for want of room from my plays ; but to give such trifles a separate pub- 
lication, would indeed have argued greater proof of want of judgment than any 
which I think Mr. Kennedy has brought to bear against me. As his compliments 
on this occasion seem neither insidious nor ironical, — which some of his commen- 
dations do appear to be, — I receive them with all proper thanks at his hands. 



19 

mixing up, not merely Hellenic and Hellenistic Greek, but 
secular and sacred literature in any shape ; and the expres- 
sion of opinion on this point in one quarter, to which I 
felt the greatest respect, determined me for some time to 
abandon that part of my plan altogether : but the fire was 
hot within, and could not at last be restrained; two reasons 
conspiring to make me break my first, and perhaps more pru- 
dent resolves. In the first place, I knew that the nature of 
my undertaking would eventually lead me to investigate the 
sources out of which the Athenian drama, and more particu- 
larly its comic portion, originally grew : that investigation I 
knew would lead me to the shores of Egypt and Phoenicia, 
and once there, no guide was left me so full and satisfactory 
as that Book, which whether we please to ascribe to it the 
character of sacred or otherwise, is still the oldest literary 
production in the world, and for all purposes of learned in- 
quiry must ever be reasoned upon as such. In the study 
of that book I had taken, and hope ever to take, a far deeper 
interest than any which classical literature can offer ; and feel- 
ing as I felt both then and now that when the time came 
for explaining whence and how the comic drama of Athens 
arose, and why it presents phenomena so strange to us, that 
from the pages of that Book much information of a totally 
novel nature could be adduced, — was I to be precluded from 
iMouallv shewing beforehand, that such information did 
not come from a person wholly unversed in that branch of 
literature \ But I must candidly admit, thai it was less in 
reference to distant and speculative opinions, than to those of 
;i more Immediate and practical kind, that the class of notes, to 
whieli I am now referring, broke from me at an earlier period 
than L intended. 

Singularly as the pages of Aristophanes bring before us all 
the prominent features and workings of (he present day — 
the Strivings after politieal power on the popular side — 
the wide spread of education through all ranks and classes — 
the tendency in many quarters to giye that education a 

scientific and philosophic, rather than a religious character — 

c 2 



20 

the thought could not but continually recur to one brought 
into daily contact with those pages — ' And how did these aspira- 
tions after power and knowledge in the day of Aristophanes 
eventually terminate ?' History replied, ' In the fall of the 
empire which his countrymen were rearing — a fall as 
sudden and complete as its rise had been sudden and extra- 
ordinary.' Could a more momentous question fail to follow ? 
r And is a still mightier empire, the heart of which beats 
indeed within this small island, but the extremities of which 
belong to the rising and the setting sun, is that mighty nation 
to share the fate of Athens, because she thinks fit to run the 
same political career ?' And who is to save her from it ? The 
victor of a hundred fights — as the panegyric of the day is wont 
to term him — the victor of himself, whenever his country's in- 
terests or those of humanity require it, as a still more admiring 
posterity will learn to term him ? The better portion of that 
country hangs indeed upon his lips, and treasures up all that 
falls from them, as grateful and affectionate children do those 
of a parent, of whom they fear soon to be bereaved ; but that 
illustrious person, though still mighty for defensive purposes, 
knows well that all real power has long since passed from his 
hands, and rests with one whose very name it has become 
loathsome to repeat Are we to look to the Great Commoner ? 
The look again is useless. No language of gratitude can 
indeed do justice to that firm courage which still held on, 
while all around despaired — to that patient perseverance, 
which has gradually brought together the scattered elements 
of an almost annihilated party — or to that integrity of purpose 
which scorns to advocate out of office doctrines which it would 
repudiate when in office, and which by gaining golden 
opinions from all except the impatient and unwise of his own 
party, has made his return to office the one great point to 
which the general eye is turning. But suppose this highly- 
gifted statesman once more in that station, where his country's 
wishes, rather than his own, desire to see him placed, by what 
tenure, and consequently for what length of time, does he 



21 

maintain it ? The popular voice at present exclaims, ' By the 
tenure of my will ; and that will ensures him his high post 
for the remainder of his days.' Honourable and most flatter- 
ing testimony ! but alas ! who knows better than he who is 
the object of it, that of all uncertain things popular favour 
is the most uncertain, and that a storm — raised it may be 
in a moment by those who can raise but not control a 
storm — throws him at once from the national helm, and 
leaves the vessel again upon the breakers. Where then lies 
our safety, if safety, under Providence, may yet be found ? 

If the pages of Aristophanes inform us where our present 
political danger lies, the pages of an equally great contem- 
porary instruct us that our political safety lies in that which 
Athens did not possess, but which our own more favoured 
country does possess in almost every town and village : and 
what is that I It is that man, humble it may be in fortune — 
plain perhaps in attire, and certainly peccable like all around 
him : — yet opulent or poor, richly or humbly garbed, sin- 
stained or spotless, there he stands — 

M The legate of the skies ! — his theme divine, 

" HIS OFFICE SACRED, HIS CREDENTIALS CLEAR." 

By him it is true, and ' in strains as sweet as angels use,' the 
gospel speaks its words of peace, peace for sin repented and 
amended ; but by him again, ■ the violated law speaks out its 
thunders ;' and his credentials tell him, and in a form of 
prayer, into the small compass of which none but a Deity 
conversant with all his own proceedings could have thrown 
such pregnancy of meaning, that that law is as much violated 
by every offence of a public h , as by every offence of a private 

h It is utterly impossible to enter here into a subject of so large and deep an 
import ; but the reader who wishes to know why, when the author of Christianity 
was asked by his disciples to give them, as was customary with the rabbis 
or great teachers of the day, a brief summary of his doctrines, he gave it in two 
forms, implying that our public and private duties stand upon the same esseutial 
ground of moral probation, will do well to consult Lightfoot, than whom no man 
better understood rabbinical modes of speakiug and reasoning. See more parti- 
cularly HI. 115. VI. 417. 425-7. &c. 

c 3 



22 

nature — that the abuser of a franchise is as criminal in the 
eyes of that law as the filcher of a neighbour's purpose — that 
the soul's salvation may be as much bartered for a mitre, as 
for the meanest coin shuffled into a pauper's hand, and that 
the midnight assassin stands snow-white before Heaven, in 
comparison with the statesman who has betrayed the highest 
of human trusts. 

Such a body of men we do possess ; and it is not a little 
remarkable that for all the crimes and ills with which a foul 
Democracy had deluged Athens, the mind of Socrates or 
Plato, or both united, could devise no remedy but the 
formation ^in the state's bosom of a similar body of men ; — 
men w r hose minds should be devoted exclusively to the study 
of things divine, but who as husbands and fathers should 
still be so bound up with the community, as not to be alto- 
gether isolated from things i human ; — and it is further ob- 
servable that the plan of education laid down by them for 
training such a body of men is precisely that which one of our 
own two great Universities has ever made the basis of her 
academic instruction — those abstract mathematical truths, 
which seem best fitted for leading the mind into divine truth, 
and which in the writings of Barrow, and others, have led to 
the sounding of depths in the human mind, of which Socrates 
and Plato had no conception. I feel a deep sense of shame, as it 
were, in withdrawing the reader's mind from such men to my 
own humble views and objects, but an attack, conducted as it 
appears to me with equal virulence and unfairness, obliges me 
to enter into these details. If Socrates and Plato are correct 
in their views, — and who can doubt that they are perfectly 
correct? — it is evident that our clergy have, under existing 
circumstances, become a new element in the body politic, 
forming a problem to be solved in politics, of which antiquity 
had no experience, and that consequently in the preliminary 
education of such an order of men, some things must now 

i See the sixth and .seventh books of Flato's Republic almost throughout. 



23 

be taken into consideration which did not previously exist. I 
know not why in the edition of any ancient classic the attention 
of young students should not be occasionally drawn to those 
Sacred Writings, the understanding and explanation of which 
is to form the future occupation of their lives, but in my own 
department of editorial labour, such an occasional reference 
seemed almost indispensable. A large portion of those labours 
threw me entirely on politics ; and what did those politics bring 
before the student himself? — &fac simile of the times in which 
he is placed ; putting him in close contact with new crimes and 
elements of mischief, such as too wide an enlargement of poli- 
tical freedom almost inevitably brings w4th k it, and with which 
he, it appears, would most largely have to deal in future : was it 
wholly unbecoming then, that while instructed in the new 
duties devolving upon him, his thoughts should at intervals 
be drawn to the source from which he derives not only his 
commission for dealing with such duties, but where he best 
learns the spirit in which he is to deal with them ; — a spirit of 
rebuke, and even sharp rebuke, if necessary ; but, in accord- 
ance with its more general tone, a spirit of patience and for- 
bearance — a spirit of charity and peace — an earnest desire to 
conciliate, and mediate between conflicting parties — an un- 
wearied endeavour to soften the acerbities of political struggle, 
and to throw oil upon the troubled waters, instead of lashing 
them into greater fury? Mr. Kennedy may sneer if he pleases 
at notes calculated to produce such effects ; but it must be 
higher authority than his which will induce me to desist from 
them. They have been to me the greatest sweeteners of toils, 
which, as Mr. K. informs me, bring no great glory with them, 
even when successful, and which, I can inform him, bring 
little profit either; but in which reputation and pecuniary 
profit ought to be matters of mere secondary consideration, 
provided they can be made of any real utility. 

k Wbik tbeM words are heirjer written, a case of the deepest political turpi- 
tude is brought before the legislature, with which it openly confesses itself incom- 
petent to deal. Are sucl* crimes then to pass without rebuke, and corruption 
and perjury to overspread the whole constituency of the kingdom ? 

c 4 



Wearisome as the explanations into which I have been 
forced must, I fear, prove to others, the rattling of my adver- 
sary's two falchions reminds me, that to him they have become 
matter of absolute distaste, and that he is impatient to put the 
contest — not on proof of general judgment, or the contrary — 
but on those minor points of scholarship and grammar, in 
which he evidently feels himself to be as strong, as he knows 
me to be weak and deficient. But before I come to Mr. 
Kennedy's work of demolition in details, let me be allowed one 
little proof in advance, that even here I did not proceed with- 
out some exercise of caution and foresight. ' Indeed!' says 
my adversary, pricking up his ears, ' and who might be your 
counsellors on this occasion ?' I blush, as well I may, in so 
learned a presence to confess it — but Mr. Kennedy has in one 
of his pages given me credit for extensive reading — and — but 
I again speak, e del color- cospersa, Che fa 1* uom di perdon tal 
volta degno', Purgat. 5. — I did not hesitate to derive a lesson 
even from so humble a source as the Preface to a cookery book. 
6 The preface to a cookery-book !' exclaims my adversary with 
uplifted hands, i and what in heaven's name did you learn 
there V 6 I learned — and it was of some consequence to 
me to learn — that if in this department of my task I 
attempted what Mrs. Glasse calls, " the high polite style," 
and " larded with large lardoons" — in other words, that if with 
my slight knowledge of such matters I attempted what such 
men as Porson and Elmsley (not to speak of living scholars) 
had so successfully achieved, I could expect nothing but the 
utmost ridicule ; but that if I contented myself with explain- 
ing the grammar of my text by little more than the ordinary 
references, I might be allowed to proceed with a work of 
some utility alike without censure or praise, which in this 
department of my undertaking was all I knew that my humble 
ambition could aspire to. I offered therefore no emenda- 
tions — I re-arranged no choruses, and I left grammatical sub- 
tleties and their investigations to those who had more taste and 
talent for them — I babbled, it may be, some little matters about 



25 

ellipses, (' for which I'll handle you presently/ says he of the 
two falchions,) and an acuter eye than Mr. Kennedy's might 
perhaps have perceived that my verbal illustrations were 
arranged on a plan not wholly without some value — but all 
the rest was done, i ut homunculus, unus e multis, probabilia 
conjectura sequens' (Cicero Tusc. I. 99.) ; ' nihil affirmans, 
quserens omnia, dubitans plerumque, et mihi ipse diffidens.' 
(Id. de Divin. II. §. 3.) Closely as Mr. Kennedy has sifted 
my pages (and always for purposes of injury and depreciation,) 
I defy him to produce any passage in them materially at 
variance with the spirit here mentioned, or any passage in 
which the name of any contemporary scholar is mentioned 
disrespectfully, with the single exception of Wellauer. And 
why was that exception made ? Because his commentaries on 
^Eschylus appeared to me to be reviving that spirit of criticism, 
which in the person of Brunck and others had done so much 
injury to ancient literature, making with persons of refined 
taste the names of scholar and blackguard almost synony- 
mous. — And now, Mr. Kennedy, take your stand, as I am 
prepared to take mine. 

Mr. K. You are determined then to try the combat ? 

M . Have you left me a choice ? 

Mr. K. You have doubtless tried the classic lots, before 
you begin so unequal a fray ? 

M. I have tried no such nonsense. 

Mr. K. (throwing a Euripides). Oblige me then, or rather 
serve yourself, by dipping into that tragedian. {Aside) I 
patronize him most of the Great Three, and for reasons well 
known to myself. {Aloud) Where do you find yourself? 

Jf. {inspecting) Among a body of friends, who say to me, 
1 (~)dp<T£L, Be of good courage. 

Mr. K. To which you, like another Hector, though with 
teeth shaking, reply — 

M. &apcra), I am of good courage. 

Mr. K. {aside). The double-edged is unsheathing, and the 
man is doomed. {Aloud) And still you persist I 

J Eur. Rhesus 1 6. 



26 

M. I ask again, can I retreat ? 

Mr. K. Then nothing remains but to arrange the terms of 
combat : how do you propose to conduct them ? 

M. I shall go through the whole of your remarks on my 
first play— 

Mr. K. The m starred passages and all ? 

M. I shall omit none. 

Mr. K. (aside) The simpleton! by a little dexterous manage- 
ment he might have selected his topics, and eluded my ven- 
geance ; but — quern Deus vult perdere — (aloud) Well : to this 
I assent. What next ? 

M. At your comment on v. 275. of that play, I shall start 
off into a long dissertation — 

Mr. K. (aside) The longer the better; for the more he 
speaks on these matters, the more he will expose himself. 
(aloud) Well! 

M. Where doctrines will be laid down, some of them novel, 
no doubt, in their nature, but by which, whether novel or 
otherwise, I shall proceed to test, as well the laws of Philo- 
sophic Grammar generally, as some of your own grammatical 
criticisms, and those selected miscellaneously, and from vari- 
ous plays. 

Mr. K. Stars inclusive ? 

M. Stars not merely inclusive, but by preference. 

Mr. K. (aside). An enterprising fellow this ! I doubt whe- 
ther he will succumb so easily as I thought. 

M. The rest of your comments I shall select and enlarge 
upon more or less ad libitum; taking the several plays in your 
own order. Are we agreed ? 

Mr. K. On two conditions : first, that such of the starred 
passages as you omit, I am to deal with afterwards — (aside) Ah ! 
he evidently hangs fire there — but I'll have it out of him — and 
theoretically as well as practically — : {aloud) what, no reply ? 

M. {reluctantly) If it must be so — 

Mr. K. Must be so ! it shall be so : how else is it to be 

m It is necessary to observe here, that where Mr. Kennedy thinks me particu- 
larly faulty, he marks the passage with an asterisk. 



27 

ascertained that you have dealt fairly in your selections ? — 
Secondly, observe that all is to be done gravely and deco- 
rously — no jokes, no pleasantries — I never go beyond a Sar- 
donic grin myself — for mark ! though barren spectators may 
laugh on such occasions, wiser heads will at once see that 
you are pinched by my argument, and are merely seeking 
a loop-hole to creep out of. What ! no reply ? Then I 
see what you are meditating ; but no matter : grave or gay, — 
trifle with your subject, or deal seriously with it, — the double- 
edged is out, and Kiihner and Matthia? give you a safe deli- 
verance ! And now, as Rabelais says, whom by the way you 
quote a world too often, begin at the beginning. 

ACHARNIANS. 

6. toTs v4vrt rakdvTOLs oh KXecov e£?///ecrei\ 

Mr. Mitchell should have noticed here his favourite historian's 
anachronism, in citing this line as evidence of the fine which the 
same accurate writer supposes Cleon to have been condemned to 
pay after the exhibition of the Knights. Vol. II. 222. [K.] 

The historian here alluded to is Mitford, whom Mr. Ken- 
nedy elsewhere twits me with terming c the historian of 
Greece.' The Italics are most probably Mr. Kennedy's own, 
and it is not the only instance in which it has pleased him to 
convert my Roman characters into Italian, (of which more 
hereafter.) And if in some earlier production I had so styled 
Mitford, what then ? Lord Byron, who knew more of history, 
perhaps, than M r. Kennedy and myself put together, had not 
only so designated him, but though widely differing from him 
in politics, pronounced him to be the only great historian in 
Europe. If Mr. Thirlwall, by his superior learning and 
n m nvli, (for which no one entertain* a deeper respect than 
tnyself,) has entirely superseded B Mitford, the more to his 

B Tliis is not the place for indulging in personal anecdotes; otherwise I COttld 

furnish some not uuamnstng ones respecting this powerful and accomplished, 
but eccentric writer. Of his fondness for every thing connected with Greece, his 

beautiful Ilampshir _ ive ample testimony ; every blade of barley grown 

upon them baring been, as I remember to have heard him say, derived from a 
few grains of barley sent trim from Attica. 



28 

credit ; but why should Mr. K. trample on a lifeless corpse ? 
He did not learn that doctrine from Aristophanes. With 
regard ta the blunder here attributed to Mitford, it is pro- 
bable that when writing my note I was not aware of it ; but 
had I been, I certainly should have suppressed all notice of 
the error ; and for this, among other reasons — that it is habi- 
tual with me, unless when personally attacked, to seek rather 
what to commend than what to censure. This, a pleasing 
duty in all instances, becomes in scholarship almost a sacred 
one. For what is the most successful scholarship ? It is little, 
more than to climb on a predecessor's shoulders, and thereby 
gain a little wider scope of vision — too happy if we can be- 
come a temporary step for a successor of still wider eye °. 

JO. ore bri Kexvvrj. 

The reading of the Etymol. 9 Kexo vf l» which is here adopted by 
Elmsley, should have been mentioned for the benefit of the student, 

° And this process of supersession necessarily takes place in grammar as well 
as other matters. How does Garagantua write to his son Pantagruel, when pur- 
suing his studies at the University of Paris ? 'Such/ says that great grammarian, 
when urging Pantagruel to the study of the Greek language, — e without which a 
man maybe ashamed to account himself a scholar/ — c such hath by divine good- 
ness been the amendment and increase of knowledge, that I, who in my youthful 
days was (and that justly) reputed the most learned of that age, should now 
hardly be admitted into the first form of the little Grammar school-boys' (II. 
eh. 8.). And so with the grammatical Garagantuas of our own day. Matthiae, 
acting on the hints which his countrymen had thrown out in the investigation of 
their own powerful language, and more particularly in its real or supposed con- 
nexion with Greek and Sauscrit, proceeds to apply the l philosophizing process' 
to the former tongue, and for some years what name stands higher in the gram- 
matical world than that of Matthias ? Bernhardy, however, profiting by his 
predecessor's labours, in due time pronounces those labours to be more specious 
than solid (Wissens. Synt. Vorrede p. 4.), advances his own doctrine of Sub- 
sumption (Ibid. pp. 40. &c. &c), and looks to supersede, and — as far as in- 
genuity and a keen knowledge of Aristophanic Greek go — deserves to supersede 
Matthia?. But his feet are scarcely on the shoulders of Matthia?, before those of 
Kuhner are upon his own. Instead of the doctrine of Subsumption , the latter 
advances some novelties about the Optative mood, quietly incorporates into his 
Syntax all that was valuable in his predecessors, Rost, Matthiae,Hartung, &c. and 
presently all grammatical eyes turn towards the learned Hanoverian. Mr. Ken- 
nedy would of course think it foul scorn to borrow a hint from such an ignora- 
mus as myself in these matters, yet in the Christian spirit of heaping coals of fire 
on his head, I shall preseutly proceed to throw out a sketch, on which if his 
' comprehensive' mind would condescend to act, he might perhaps for a time 
supersede all that have yet gone before him. 



29 

because the Attic prose and comic writers so rarely omit the aug- 
ment. They do, however, occasionally in this tense (except \P1 V 
fcr exprjv) alone. [K.] 

When Mr. Kennedy, besides other acquirements which 
will presently be recommended to him, shall have made 
himself master of the Sanscrit tongue, he w r ill doubtless be 
able to throw additional light on the Greek augment. (Cf. 
Hartung, II. no, &c.) The first part of his present note, 
how r ever, is sensible enough ; and had I not thought the world 
sick of hearing about the subject, something to that effect 
would perhaps have found its way into my owtl notes ; — but 
the second portion ! — Mr. Kennedy for reasons, of which 
more in due time, has endeavoured to make me acquainted 
with the writings of Ariosto ; before we part company, I hope 
in return to make him acquainted with the writings of an 
Italian poet of still higher order. At present, I content 
myself with saying that this is by no means the only place 
where Mr. Kennedy's mode of writing English (no doubt he 
writes Greek infinitely better) has bent me into that likeness 
of an arch — ' spanning midway the flood,' — wdiich Dante 
represents the human body as assuming, when something 
advanced by a speaker or writer is exceedingly difficult of 
comprehension. 

Seguendo lui portava lamiafronte, 
Come colui, che l'ha di pensier carca, 
Che fa di se un mezzo arco di ponte. 

Purgatorio, Cant. 19. 

24. O.TCL 6' (jtxTTLOVVTCU 7TO)S So/CftS 

ikBdvTts aXKr}\oi(TL 7repi irpoorov £v\ov. 

* The words tls fidx^ are to be here understood in the same form 
of construction as o-refKpvXco ds \6yov *\6(lv (Eq. 806 ) [M.] Such 
an ellipse 18 unknown to the language. The construction is, as 
Bergler says, uxmovvrai. dXX/jXoij. Thus, v. 844. ovK uxjtuI KXeoo- 

When Matthias and Mr. Kennedy set their faces, as they 



30 

do upon all occasions, against elliptic forms, (the former for 
reasons which can be partly conjectured, the latter for reasons 
best known to himself, for he rarely condescends to give any,) 
they appear to me to act not only against a vital principle 
of the Attic P language, and the general workings of language 
as they develope themselves under forms of government 
highly democratic, but to evince ignorance of a class of 
writers, who must have had great influence in the formation 
of the middle Attic, but which writers none of the modern 
grammarians, that I have seen, have taken sufficiently into 
account. But more of all this hereafter. Let us here con- 
fine ourselves to what is immediately before us. That 
Bergler and Mr. Kennedy have settled this matter very 
easily between them, there can be no doubt ; but was it to 
be determined by a mere reference to a very easy passage 
in a subsequent verse of the drama ? To do justice to my 
remark, which Mr. K. has garbled, he ought to have placed 
the whole passage before the reader, and not have garbled 
that also. The passage itself runs thus : 

ol ff Iv ayopa \a\ov(Ti, kolvoh koI kcltco 
to ayoivLov <fievyovo~i to /xe/xiArto/xe^ozr 
ov& ol irpvraveis {Jkovo-lv, akk aapiav 
t]kovt€s, elra §' g)o~tlovvtcll tt&s boKets 
eXOovres akXrjkois ire pi updrov ^vKov, 
aOpooi KOLTappiovres. 

Proverbially fond as the Greeks were of participles, 
(Matth. I. Pref. p. 33.) the poet has here accumulated them 

p For a far more comprehensive and philosophic view of the doctrine of ellipses 
than Matthiae has given, the reader is referred to Bernhardy's Wissensch. Synt. 
(pp. 41 — 4.455. S< 1* See also Hartung, I. 128. 131. 4. II. Vor. 6. 41. 113. 
155. 159. 161, 2. 260. 388. 411. 476. &c. &c.) Kuhner (p. 852.), and Dce- 
derlein before him, have endeavoured to establish a distinction between elliptic 
and brachylogic forms in the middle Attic; how far correctly, I leave better 
judges of these matters than myself to determine. Neither Kuhner nor Bern- 
hardy has entered sufficiently into the immediate point of dispute between 
Mr. Kennedy and myself, to make their evidence decisive (Kiihn. §. 574. 
Anm. 3. Bern. p. 99.) ; and it may be added that neither of them has taken 
into account the reciprocal nature of the verb wo-Ti&o-Bai, which I had pre- 
viously established by a reference to the Plutus of Aristophanes, and which 
consequently left me at greater liberty to deal with the dative a\\4\\ois according 
to my elliptic fancies. 



31 

in a manner which not only ' bent me to the likeness of an 
arch/ but if I recollect right, a scholar whose reputation with 
the world for sound scholarship rests upon a much surer 
basis, than Mr. Kennedy's or my own is ever likely to do ? 
and who certainly was more ready to admit the difficulty 
of this passage than to supply a solution of it. Up to the 
words ikOovres akkijXois I had given explanations of every 
term as they occurred, and these I presume appeared satis- 
factory to Mr. K.; as he is certainly not the person to let me 
escape if he finds me tripping. That the passage in question 
is of the loosest possible construction, and such as a modern 
schoolboy would be brought to the halberts for, and * carded 
into a scarlet robe,' notwithstanding any protestations he 
might make about ' combinations of sentences,' there can be 
no doubt ; and a stronger confirmation of the doctrines which 
I shall presently advance, that writers of the Aristophanic 
age had not, in the strict sense of the word, any knowledge 
of grammar whatever, could not be produced than the passage 
before us. That, however, is not the immediate question ; 
the question is, had I any right to assume such an ellipse 
as I have here supposed ? I answer, that in the first place we 
have so little of comic Greek remaining, and are so entirely 
without some Ionic writings, to which I alluded in the begin- 
ning of this note, and to which I shall refer more fully in 
another place, that we are hardly entitled to say what is 
elliptic and what is not elliptic in Aristophanes ; but if from 
Ionic and tragic Greek I produce an elliptic form, filled up, 
much as I proposed to fill the present, I come out of the 
contest at all events with Dantesque decency; if not, k as \w 
who wins,' yet not altogether 'as he who ( i loses.' Now 
Euripides and Herodotus seem to supply me with an elliptic 
form so filled up ; and in the present instance that is all 
that I contend for. 

qe i>arve <li custom 
(juegli, clie vincc, c non colui, che perde. 

Infcrn. Caot 15. 



32 

KairpoL 8' oiiws frqyovres ayplav yivvP, 
^vvrjyj/av. Eur. Phoen. 1395. 

m el? Aoyovs gvpfjyj/a HokwetKet fxokcav. Ibid. 714. 
jj,€\\ovT(s>v be awcotyeiv ra crTpaTo'ireba e? fid^rjj/^ 

Herodot. V. 75. 

Leaving the reader to decide whether this illustration 
shews me most winner or loser on the present occasion, 
I must be permitted to say a few words as to Mr. Ken- 
nedy's general mode of dealing with me on these occa- 
sions. In my own note on the subject of eXOovreg aWrjkoLs 
I had given two references ; but the one most fitted to my 
purpose (Vesp. 472. es Xoyovs eXOvpLev aXXrjXots) Mr. K. sup- 
presses : and with this I ought to be satisfied ; his general 
practice being to suppress my references altogether, and then 
make me speak in an authoritative, dictatorial way, which 
may be habitual to him, but which, I can assure him, is any 
thing but habitual to me. 

72. (T(j>6bpa yap 4<ro>^6pirjv eya* 

Tiapa ttjv eiraXgiv ev (j)opvr£ KaraKeipevos ; 

This is Dindorf 's reading. But the mark of interrogation should 
be omitted with Elmsley, for it spoils the irony of the passage. [K.] 

Had Mr. Kennedy understood what Hartung calls the 
suppletive-syllogistic sense (I. 476.), in which the particle 
yap is here used, he would perhaps have preferred a mark of 
admiration to either Elmsley's or Dindorf 's mode of punctua- 
tion ; but had / ventured on such a liberty with the text, my 
admiration-mark would doubtless have stood before his eyes 
something like Cowper's Katterfelto, wondering at it's own 
wonderment. With regard to Dindorf s text, I may be per- 
mitted to observe generally, that my dealings with it were much 
disturbed by some confused notions about copyright, into 
which I had been misled, and of which it is not necessary 
to speak further. Out of these confused notions grew a piece of 
inconsistency, which Mr. Kennedy adverts to in page 18. Copy- 
right, as I thought, obliged me to give the text as I found it 
in Black's edition ; but not being satisfied with the text itself, 



33 

my note pointed to authority where the text, I thought, stood 
on a better footing. But enough of this trifle, on which if I 
write somewhat confusedly, it is because my mind was then, 
and still is, in some confusion about these laws of copy- 
right r . 

24O. pO(f>rj(T€(.. 

From Vespae, 814. (avrov pivav yap tt)V (fxucrjv poq^TJo-ofiai) it is 
clear that the legitimate future of pofalv is in the middle voice. [M.] 
This note is Elmsley's ; but the conclusion &c. [K.] 

Did I say otherwise than that the note was Elmsley's? 
c And why so over-sensitive V rejoins my assailant. ' Your 
business was to have thrown a shield over Elmsley, a blunder 
of whose I proceeded to expose, and not a blunder of your 
own.' When the reader sees — as he will see hereafter — what 
insinuations Mr. Kennedy throws out against the general 
probity of my dealings, he will excuse my sensitiveness to any 
expression so loosely worded as this of Mr. Kennedy's, and 
which might seem to imply that I had made use of a note of 
Elmsley's without acknowledging it. That Mr. Kennedy 
himself is always correct in acknowledging his obligations, 
I have some reasons for doubting. In notes to infr. 468. 
Eq. 630. Yesp. 681, I think I see him borrowing more or 
less from Maltby and Matthise without making any acknow- 
ledgment whatever. 

275. — tl cpeibofjitcrOa tQv \C6g>v oj hrj^iorat 

ixr\ ov KCLTa^aCveiv. 

coo-Tf, sub. [M.] There is no need to suppose any ellipse, either 
here or with opyfj v. 475. [K.] 

What the reader was to expect at this stage of my pro- 
dings, he has already been forewarned : but am I with- 
out excuse for drawing so largely upon him ? Throughout 

r Mr. Kennedy speaks of Dtndorf'l reading in the text as being au icoirj. 
This reading, it may be as well to observe, is not in the learned writer*! text 

itself, but in his * Annotations,' where Dindorf often adopts a different reading 
from that which his text gives. , 

1) 



34 

his whole ' Remarks ' Mr. Kennedy rarely fails to pronounce, 
as he does here, ex cathedra, what is grammar and what is 
not ; generally without condescending to give the slightest 
reason for his so deciding. Now, without making any in- 
vidious observations on the amount of Mr. Kennedy's gram- 
matical attainments, I ask, Is the general history of Grecian 
grammar such, as to admit of so much dogmatism ? or, have 
the researches of Matthiae (the only authority to which Mr. K. 
seems to bow) placed the matter on so firm a basis, that his 
pupil is entitled to treat every person in this contemptuous 
dictatorial way, who does not see details of grammar in the 
same point of view as himself? A brief view of either subject 
will shew how far this is from being the case. 

The history of genuine grammar unquestionably begins 
with Aristotle ; and he perhaps had hardly propounded at the 
court of Macedon, that 6 a verb is a sound composed of other 
sounds; — significant — with expression of time — -and of which 
no partis by itself significant'' (Twining's Aristotle, I. 163), 
before cavil and dissent began to shew themselves without the 
palace-walls, whatever reverence the new doctrines might find 
within. Things did not mend, when Grammar followed in 
his pupil's train to Alexandria : the soubriquet attached to 
the name of one of the acutest of the ancient grammarians s 
evincing, that bile and indigestion had early worked as much 
warfare in grammar as in other matters. But the grammarians, 
driven from Alexandria, find hospitable refuge in the royal 
palace at Byzantium — do things become more peaceable ? The 
first provision of Constantine on the occasion seems to indicate 
that he well understood the tribe he had to deal with ; but 
whether his btbdaKaXos olKov^evLKos answered all the purposes 
for which, I presume, he was intended, is not for me to say ; 
but I doubt whether Grammar admitted of any peace till 
she took flight before the Turks, and found refuge in the 
courts of Italy. Here indeed an interval of quiet appears to 

s Apollonius, surnamed Dyscolus (8v<tko\os) i.e. morose, hard of digestion. 



35 

have been allowed. The transports of delight with which the 
Politians and Lorenzos of the day received the new accessions 
to their intellectual treasures, made them acquiesce with im- 
plicit submission in the doctrines of the fugitive Greeks, who 
brought those treasures with them, and had in their hands 
the exclusive power of expositing them. But as the first 
enthusiasm subsided, defects began to be visible in the MSS., 
grammars multiplied, and with Lascaris and Chalcondylas 
grammatical assent and dissent assumed, it may be, the forms 
which they have ever since maintained. ' I believe in the new 
doctrines,' exclaimed one, ' because my brother Peter believes 
in them.' 'And I assent to them,' said Peter, ' because my first 
cousin Martin has given in his adhesion.' 'And how can my 
faith be otherwise than orthodox,' said Martin, s who derive 
it from the lips of the great Lascaris himself ?' ' A straw for 
your Lascaris,' said some furious partisan on the other side j ' I 
would scourge the child of my bosom, if I found him adopting 
his " Erotemata," and as for believing in them myself, I had 
rather believe in all matter of unbelief. No : I die faithful 
to Chalcondylas and the " Eight Parts." ' The grammatical 
caldron was now fairly at work ; and that it might be kept 
at boiling-heat, Urbanus, Manutius and Melancthon threw 
into it their several ' Institutions ;' Sylburgius added his 
1 Notes on Clenard ;' Rhodomannus with his ' Three Declen- 
sions ' 'did' battle to the old grammarians with their ' Ten;' 
Fischer supplied his ' Animadversions on Weller,' Trendelen- 
burg his ' Anfangsgrunde,' Lennep his 'Analogy,' Hemster- 
huys his ' Three Letters,' and Hermann his ' Universa Ser- 
monis Natura,' and ' Metaphysical Subtleties :' every new- 
ingredient thrown into the caldron being the signal for 
freab disputes, cavils, assent and dissent — Peter, Martin and 
the rest of it. Brief and rapid as this sketch is, it is sufficient 
to shew that Law is not the only thing proverbial for change 
and uncertainty — that what is Greek Grammar to-day, is not 
Greek Grammar to-morrow, and that consequently a cautious 
and modest man, instead of throwing doubt upon his neigh- 

I) 2 



36 

hour's grammar, is content to defend his own. But to pro- 
ceed. Our own day has cast us on the well known names of 
Matthiae, Host, Buttmann, Bernhardy, Hartung, Kiihner, &c. 
and all is now c matter of philosophy ' — c philosophizing reason,' 
and c the simplification of variety :' and why ? ( because in no 
nation does this endeavour after simplification appear more 
evident than in the Greek/ (a somewhat startling enuncia- 
tion, when it is considered that besides an infinite number of 
other anomalies, the Gre^k language exhibits no less than 
800 anomalous verbs *,) and ' because no nation was more 
free and independent of foreign influence, or more favourably 
situated for improvement with regard to external circum- 
stances, in its constitution, religious improvements, and the 
universal cultivation of knowledge ; in which latter respect, 
especially, it attained to a just equilibrium of all the powers 
of the mind, no one being allowed by exclusive culture to 
predominate over the rest.' — (Matthise's Pref. to Gr. Gr. 
p. 27). 

When philosophy takes any thing in hand, we all know, 
that instead of settling previous differences and dissensions, 
its general process is to create new ones ; and to this we are 
evidently tending in respect to philosophical grammar. 
Bernhardy, as has been already seen, has denounced Mat- 
thiae's philosophy as more glitter than gold; Kiihner evi- 
dently considers Bernhardy's science as of no further value 
than as some small aid to his own improved notions of syn- 
tax ; the Bopp and Riickert doctrines of a great Indo-Graeco- 
Germanic language are laughed to scorn by Ellendt and his 
admirers, who eschew all reference to the Sanscrit ; Hartung, 
without naming Rost, hints at a portion of his doctrine (p. 
470.), as being little better than childish absurdity (II. 150.); 
while the c New Cratylus,' for aught I know, is tripping up 
Hartung's heels, just as the latter had tripped up Hermann's, 
pronouncing his metaphysical subtleties on the Greek par- 

t Carmichael's Greek Verbs, Preface, p. 4. 



37 

tides to be little better than a heap of ingenious rubbish. 
The ark of Greek Grammar therefore is still upon the waters, 
with no satisfactory landmark but Mr. Kennedy, who, doubt- 
ing of nothing but my capacity to edit Aristophanes, pro- 
claims aloud, ' This is Grammar, and that is not Grammar ; it 
is needless to state reasons ; I George John have said it, and 
the world may be at peace. 5 Before bringing to the test 
some of the results of this extraordinary confidence on the 
part of Mr. Kennedy, let us be allowed to say a few words 
on the master, and, as far as I can see, the only master, from 
a study of whose writings Mr. K. has derived this confi- 
dence ; his preceptor himself being certainly a man of the 
greatest erudition, and I need not therefore add, a man of the 
greatest modesty. 

That a vein of deep philosophy runs at the bottom of the 
meanest language that ever was written or spoken, none but 
the most unreflecting of mankind can possibly doubt. Take 
the simplest of independent propositions, one involving in it 
no more than a subject and predicate, or subject, predicate, 
and copula, and enough is furnished to excite attention in 
the most incurious of mankind. Enlarge that proposition : — 
instead of a predicate denoting a mere condition of the sub- 
ject, in which it is conceived by itself, and without connexion 
with other objects, let it assume that form by which the sub- 
ject stands in connexion with and relation to other nouns as 
well proximately as remotely ; in other words, let there be 
(besides attributives) an active verb with an object, and with 
oblique cases ; and causes for increased attention come before 
us, even if we forbear to go deeply into questions of com- 
bination — combinations quiescent and combinations active, 
combinations internal and essential, and combinations external 
and contingent. But proceed a step further, and to the inde- 
pendent proposition add, by means of particles temporal, 
causal, conditional or intentional, a dependent proposition ; 
and what with supplemental propositions, propositions transi- 
tive and propositions relative, we become involved in a multi- 



38 

plicity of considerations, which if they do not tend to render 
grammar the most certain, do certainly tend to make it not 
the least interesting of human sciences. The question then 
naturally arises ; And what language was best fitted as a 
mere instrument for working out all these operations in the 
finest and most expeditious mode ? how and by what means 
did that language attain such fineness, and when did the 
nation possessing it first become conscious that she was in 
possession of such an instrument, and then in true philo- 
sophical frame of mind proceed to give it its best polish? 
That that language is the Greek, none but the most devoted 
admirers of Sanscrit will hesitate to concede to the learned 
Matthiae ; and that in perspicuity of arrangement, in fulness 
of exemplification, and general acuteness, his Grammar sur- 
passes all its predecessors, no one can doubt; but whether 
he has laid down his preliminary processes so clearly and 
perspicuously as he might have done, — whether he was 
justified in ascribing purity as well as vigour to the language 
of the Periclean age, and above all, whether the grammar of 
that age was such a product of philosophizing reason as he 
seems to imagine, are questions which do admit of a doubt ; 
and may with proper deference be submitted for examination. 
And first, if so deep a spirit of philosophic grammar per- 
vaded the Periclean age as Matthiae supposes, how comes 
it, that of the two greatest philosophers whom the world ever 
saw, or perhaps ever will see — the one contemporaneous, 
and the other all but contemporaneous with that age — how 
happens it, that of these two philosophers the first has 
said almost nothing about the matter, and the second pro- 
pounded little more than the elements of this interesting 
branch of knowledge ? That Plato had but the most indis- 
tinct notions of the subject, is clear from his ' Cratylus ;' the 
etymological researches there displayed being, not what such 
men as Bopp and Grimm and Hartung have subsequently 
made etymological researches, matters of deep moment and 
interest, but, as Bacon observes, little better than childish 



absurdities ; while those who know any thing of the depths 
of Aristotle's mind, (depths so great and terrible that com- 
mon minds almost fear to contemplate them,) and compare 
with them his obviously small doings in grammar, can 
come but to one of two results; either that the subject had 
but just begun to cross the philosopher's own scope of vision 
(a result to which future remarks will reasonably conduct us), 
or that the general ignorance of the age upon the matter was 
such, that the merest elements of the science were as much 
as the wants of the day required him to furnish. That the 
sophists, with whom the education of the higher classes in 
Athens almost exclusively rested, knew still less than Plato 
on the subject, his own writings afford sufficient testimony. 
In those writings the few who constituted the higher classes 
of society in Athens are as faithfully described, as the many 
who formed the lower are in the pages of Aristophanes. 
But where do we find any proof that grammatical instruction, 
strictly so called, formed any portion of that course of educa- 
tion, which the sophists professed to impart, when the price 
(and no small one was exacted) had been previously paid ? A 
dictum or two of Protagoras, as, that nouns might be divided 
into masculine, feminine, and neuter, and that Homer had once 
used an imperative form where he ought to have employed 
a supplicatory 11 one, or a few remarks about syllables and 
vowels, will hardly be produced as vouchers that the sophists 
were masters of grammar x , much less of philosophical 
grammar ; and if it was not to be found among them, who 
would have turned its subtleties to so much purpose, with 
whom did it take birth ? with Homer ? with Pamphus ? with 
Olen ? with some Pelasgian, whose name time has not pre- 
served ? But if the inventor's name was lost, why did 
the invention itself perish also ? Aristotle had no sooner 
pronounced, that c a noun is a sound composed of other 

u See Aristotle's Ars Poctica, §. 34. Rhetoric, III. 5. Plato's Cratyl. 424, ('. 
x I cannot better refer for definitions of the word in its respective branches 
than to Kiihner, or Hartung, from whom Kiihncr so largely borrows. 



40 

sounds ; significant, without expression of time / ' that in the 
words man, white, indication of time is not included ; but 
that in the words, he walks, he walked, time is included' 
(Ars Poet. '§. 34), than men began to prick up their ears, 
because man's reason told him, that something had been 
enunciated, in which as a reasonable being he was much con- 
cerned; and from that moment to the present one, gram- 
matical investigations of some kind or other have never 
ceased. But where had Grammar been previously to these 
enunciations of Aristotle ; where, above all, in that Athens, 
in which Matthise had long before seen her in her highest 
state of purity as well as vigour ? I answer without hesita- 
tion, that she had been — not in the studies of curious specula- 
tors and philosophers — but, where every thing else in Athens 
was, at the foot of Democracy in the dicasteria or courts of 
law ; and that consequently dicasterian or democratic would 
be epithets more appropriate than that of philosophical to apply 
to her : and if the youngest of Matthiae's readers on the 
banks of Isis or those of Cam is but master of the ' Wasps' 
of Aristophanes, and will be content to reason from what 
occasionally passes before his eyes, he will see good grounds 
for believing that such must necessarily have been the case. 
The subject, not wholly uninviting, I hope, in itself, is, I 
think, absolutely necessary in dealing with the history of 
Greek grammar, because when the philosophical gramma- 
rians talk in vague and general terms, as they usually do, 
about Attic cleverness, and Attic political rights, without 
coming to any specific terms about either, it is time to 
shew distinctly what the nature of Attic cleverness was, 
whence it arose, and above all, in reference to our present 
inquiry, how far that cleverness was likely to operate on 
grammatical reasonings. That such a line of reasoning is 
preparatorily necessary, in order to defend myself against 
charges made by Mr. Kennedy, is matter of secondary con- 
sideration ; but as such charges have been made — and as it 
appears to me, in much ignorance of what the actual state 



41 

of grammatical knowledge was in Athens — this is an addi- 
tional excuse for going at some length into the matter. And 
now to return to the academic student, if he will permit me 
to pursue these investigations with him. 

Once, if not twice in the year, the progress of events brings 
about an excitement in the city of which he is a temporary 
resident, which though of little moment to him, is not so to 
hundreds of the humbler classes around him. And what is 
that occurrence ? That flourish of trumpets and procession 
of spearmen tells one part of it ; a sudden influx of blue bags 
and tied wigs proclaims another ; but the portion of most 
consequence to our present inquiries, is the multitudes who 
are quitting the shop-board, the anvil, the saw-pit and the 
last, and are seen hastening to the forensic banquet prepared 
for them. With the interest felt by these humble spectators 
in what goes on before them — (and how deep the attention as 
each new drama — and every new trial is as it were a drama 
to them — opens upon them ! how restless the gestures as it 
gradually evolves itself — with what greediness is every exhibi- 
tion of forensic skill — ' the wit, the logic, and the tart reply' — 
caught ! and how impatient at last the waiting for the period, 
when the lucid reasonings of the presiding genius shall strip 
the case of all conflicting testimony !)— with all this we have 
nothing to do : the only two things here necessary to be be- 
fore our eyes, are the particular class of persons in our social 
scale, who are at present thus occupied, and the rarity of the 
occurrence which so occupies them. But now, whether we 
choose still to remain in Cambridge or in Oxford, or shift the 
scene to Athens, we must change the state of the case alto- 
gether. Instead of one town-hall, let us increase them to at 
least ten, each of these halls filled with hundreds of such 
persons as we have just described ; instead of one or two 
days in the year devoted to these forensic exhibitions, let 
six days out of seven throughout the year be engrossed by 
them ; and lest the reader fear that matter fail for occupa- 
tion in such numerous courts, let him recollect that these 



42 

courts assemble not merely to try a few local and provincial 
causes, but whatever is done illegally through the length 
and breadth of the land — above ground and below ? ground, 
on land and on sea ; and that even the litigations of many 
a dependency beyond sea must come to these courts for their 
adjustment. Let the reader finally consider, that those 
smiths, and carpenters, and cobblers, whom we, in the first 
instance, made mere idle spectators in the courts of law, and 
on whom the Talfourds and Kellys, the Ludlows and Bileses 
scarcely deigned perhaps to cast an eye, are now the persons 
whose every movement and look they most industriously 
scan ; why ? because every thing their clients hold dear or 
the reverse — life and death — property or poverty — disgrace 
or reputation — hangs upon their breath ; — let him think 
of all this, and without carrying him from these courts into 
the legislative Pnyx, the student will at once see what real 
Athens was ; — not the vague unembodied one which philo- 
sophical speculators often bring before us, but the bona-fide 
Athens, which ought to be ever before our eyes, whenever 
that misused name is mentioned. With the political or moral 
results of suck a state of things we are at present uncon- 
cerned : the sole question now before us is, What were its 
necessary effects upon the intellect ? Now that a set of Hot- 
tentots could be subjected to such a course of life as this, 
and fail to become in the course of a few years a sharp, 
quicksighted, clever people, is out of the nature of things. 
But of what nature would that cleverness be ? That high 
culture of mind, which the philosophic grammarians generally 
suppose in the Athenians, and on which they so much depend 
for the philosophic arrangement of the language, as if instead 

y What employment the mines of Cornwall, Newcastle, or Mertliyr Tydvil 
may create for the legal profession, 1 am not aware ; but the silver mines of 
Laurium were prolific of occupation for the Attic lawyers. These mines, being 
the property of the state, were leased out to various individuals ; and the tricks 
practised by those persons, whether to benefit themselves by encroaching on 
their neighbours, or by cheating the state, have given birth to a considerable and 
most amusing body of foreusic speeches in the Greek language. 



43 

of the persons whom we have described, the staple specimen 
of an Athenian were such men as Plato and jEschylus and 
Sophocles ? 

Had such been the case, the Aristophanic play to which 
I have just referred, and which represents so graphically the 
whole dicastic body of Athens, in other words, those members 
of the law-courts which we have just described, that play 
would doubtless, instead of the homely pictures which it 
brings before us — pictures so perfectly true to nature — have 
described its Philocleons and Chabeses and Strymodoruses con- 
versing among themselves after something like the following 
fashion : ' Ah son of Sellus, how curious are our intentional 
particles ! When I say, " I go or I will go to the dicasterium, 
that I may earn a three-obol piece," I observe that I always 
use my verb in the conjunctive mood: why is that?' ' You 
goose,' replies the co-dicast, i for a plain reason : intention is 
an idea, existing in the mind of an agent, of a result to be 
effected by the action. Hence the intention really exists 
only so long as the action either is performed, or is to be 
performed, and must therefore after a present and a future 
tense be expressed in the conjunctive.' (Post. p. 459.) c Ex- 
cellently reasoned ! And when I say, " I went yesterday to 
the dicasterium, that I might receive a three-obol piece," why 
do I use the optative mood V * For a reason equally plain : 
because the action having been performed, and the intention no 
longer existing, but the idea only remaining that it was per- 
formed with a certain intention — therefore in this case, after 
a preterite, an optative must be used.' ' Ah how beautiful, 
but at the same time how dry is philosophic grammar ! Let us 
enter (el(TLO)fiev) this convenient vintner's, and by a refreshing 
draught of Pramnian, prepare ourselves for new draughts of 
a science so attractive.' ' Agreed : but remember that in 
philosophic grammar first persons plural, used in encouraging 
and exhorting — and such a first person plural you have just 
used — come under the rule of simple propositions, where a 
conjunctive may be used ; marry why ? because the dependent 



u 

and conditional does not necessarily receive its limitation from 
external circumstances, but the reason of the conditionally 
may lie in the human imagination ; and for this cogent 
reason — because the performance of the action still depends 
upon the will of the person to whom the address is made.' 
(Host. 441.) c Ah! you philosophic rogue! and can I doubt 
where that will will lead in the present instance ? (Aside.) 
This fellow has the whip-hand of me in particles at present ; 
but when the Pramnian begins to circulate, and I apply to 
them the doctrines of subjectivity and objectivity — space and 
time— inherency and coherency — modality and causality — 
correlatives and corresponsives — (cf. Hartung passim) I shall 
take the conceit out of him, and lower his crest a little ; but 
at present, adieu, philosophy : welcome, Pramnian !' 

Now if any such dialogues as these were put by Aristo- 
phanes into the mouths of his dicasts, it must have been in 
plays which have never reached us : in his present remains, 
Chabes and Strymodorus, with their dicastic companions, 
cheat the way to the scene of their judicial labours by singing 
a stave or two from Phrynichus, and not by any discourses 
about grammar ; and their labours concluded, and the three- 
obol fee received, the one hastens to purchase a bit of salt- 
fish, the other some fire-wood, while a third making a tempo- 
rary pocket of his mouth, as was the wont of the pauper- 
sovereign of Athens, carries it home that it may be wheedled 
out of him by Mrs, Dicast (Vesp. 609) : and this done, Chabes 
returns to his anvil, Strymodorus to the saw-pit, while Chro- 
mias, in whom the reader will see hereafter that I have 
cause to be much interested, proceeds to his usual occupa- 
tion — that of transferring leather into shoes, or cobbling shoes 
that have been already made ; unless all three choose to make 
holiday, and take their pleasure, as other sovereigns are some- 
times apt to do. 

But if grammatical niceties were unknown to the dicasts them- 
selves, they were doubtless familiar to the orators, whose busi- 
ness it was to address them so incessantly in the Pnyx or in 



45 

the courts of law. I ask, where had the orators learned these 
niceties : from others or themselves ? Not from others, for we 
have already seen that there were none to teach such doc- 
trines. They paid large education-fees to the sophists to know 
how to put their arguments into the most convincing form, 
and to enable them by confounding right and wrong, to con- 
fuse the braziers, sawyers, and cobblers, to whom those speeches 
were to be addressed; but rules of grammar the sophists, 
as we have seen, did not understand themselves, and there- 
fore could not impart. Had the orators then invented rules 
for themselves ? Higher authority than my own asserts 
that they knew little or nothing about the matter. c At the 
time when Aristotle and Plato thought^ says a critical journal 
of the highest weight, ' very few of their countrymen could 
write grammatically ; and Aristotle himself lays no little stress 
on correct syntax as a necessary but rare excellence in an 
orator 2 .' And even if Aristotle and the Quarterly Reviewers 
had promulgated no such doctrines, common sense would have 
led us to see that even had the laws of grammar been pre- 
viously understood and laid down before the great democratic 
change in the Athenian constitution took place — but which 
we have already seen there is no reason for supposing — they 
would almost necessarily have been lost in such assemblies as we 
have just been surveying. Take the infinitely inferior case in 
our own days, where rules of language are perfectly understood. 
Place a man not merely conversant with those rules, but 
master of all the refinements of the most cultivated education, 
place such a person, and with him a man gifted with nothing 

z Quart. Rev. No. CXXXII. p. 451. I cannot at the moment lay my hand 
on the exact passage here referred to, but whoever has a general acquaintance 
with the Stagyrite's grammatical sayings and doings in his Ars Poetica, his 
Rhetoric, and his treatises ' de Interpretatione,' ■ de Grammatical will acknow- 
ledge this remark to be much rather below than above the mark. Has Mr. 
Kennedy ever read the 5th chapter of the third book of Aristotle's Rhetoric? 
The statesmen, orators, and sophists of Matthia ,, s age of ' vigour and purity,' 
are there dealt with, just as we may suppose (Jaragantua's little grammar school- 
boys to have been, when hardly able to distinguish between a plural and a sin- 
gular, between a noun feminine and a noun masculine. 



46 

but a fluent tongue, before a popular audience on the hus- 
tings, and what will be the consequence ? will the man of re- 
finement endeavour to raise up his auditors to his own scale of 
intellectual elevation, or will the less gifted man readily sink 
down to theirs ? The question needs no reply. But this is a 
most imperfect view of the case. The exhibition we have 
just mentioned is one but of rare occurrence, and the con- 
sequences involve nothing more than a temporary admission 
into or rejection from the legislative assembly of the country : 
but in Athens, such exhibitions were perpetual, and the 
rewards attendant on a fluent and acceptable tongue were 
of the largest and most extraordinary kind ; — high place in the 
assemblies themselves — authority out of them — command over 
fleets and armies, and a sway which made distant potentates 
and monarchs tremble on their seats. And what was the 
grammar or grammars, which would prevail under such a state 
of things ? I certainly can recognise but two : that grammar of 
the ear which made its collocations as agreeable and eupho- 
nious as possible to its auditors, whether correct in principle, 
or not; and that grammar of the a voice, which by a unison 
of strength and flexibility, wielded a matchless language at 
its will ; travelling with rail-road speed, where speed was 
required — twisting itself through the most complicated sen- 
tences, and still bringing out the emphatic words, and such 
parts of the sentence as required to be most prominent — drop- 
ping a word here, only to take it up with more convenience 
there, (Matth. I. §. 58.) and making a double protasis or a 
double apodosis far more intelligible to the ear, than Matthise, 
Hermann, and Dissen make them to the eye. (V. Matth. II. 
1 145. Herm. Soph. OEd. Col. p. 109. Diss. Comment. II. 261.) 
Independently of these considerations, or rather in unison 
with them, every Attic writer made, I imagine, in some 
degree a grammar of his own b , and that according to his 

a Cf. Aristotle's Rhetoric, lib.iii. cap. i. throughout. 

b Matthiae, if I recollect right, makes something like au admission to this 
effect in the person of Sophocles. Kuhner, far more cautious always in his admis- 



47 

degree of proximity with the sovereign people. Was it a writer 
of the old comedy, and Aristophanes preeminently among the 
rest ? His language was as nearly as possible that of the popu- 
lar sovereign himself. Was it an orator in the Pnyx or an 
advocate in the courts of law ? The only Priscian of whom he 
stood in awe was the mass of cobblers, braziers, and carpenters, 
to whom, as constituting both judge and jury, those speeches 
were addressed. Between these two specimens of the Attic 
tongue, whether grammatical or ungrammatical, may safely be 
placed the Dialogues of Plato. Why ? because the more im- 
mediate master, from whom he derived the substance of those 
dialogues, was one whose whole life was professedly spent 
among the lower classes of Athens ; and because next to that 
master, the great object of his admiration and imitation, as 
constituting the most perfect model of Attic idiom, was the 
great comic writer to whom we have just d referred. In what 
manner the grammar of the tragic writers who addressed 
themselves as well to the cultivated as the uncultivated classes 
of society in Athens, would be formed, and still more that of 
historians, like Xenophon and Thucydides, necessarily placed 
beyond the control of the popular sovereign, are questions 
which would lead us too far from our path at present, and 
for discussing which we may have future opportunities. 

And what is there in all this, to which even our own lite- 
rature does not furnish a slight parallel ? — slight indeed, as 
must necessarily be the case under such widely different 
circumstances, — but still in some degree a parallel ? A finer 
portion of our own literature does not exist than that which 
the reign of queen Anne furnishes ; but did Lowth go to 

sions than Matthias, allows : < Jndem abcr auf diesc Weise cine bestimmte Muu- 

dart edi Kontafbrm erhoben wnrde, erlitt sic under dor bildeaden Hand den 
Dichten mannigfaltigc Modifikationen, iodem die Formen tbeus abgeglattet, 
tbcils rolltfinender and rhythmischer gebildet nurden 1 fltc Emleit. p. 7. 

<• Writ enggr an die rein attische Sprat he srhlossen sicli die Komihcr deren 
Sprache sich als die fein ausgcbildete Sprache des Lebeus darstellte (Aristo- 
phanes . Kidiner, Einieit.p.g, Sec the still more enthusiastic declarations of 
Bernhardy, Emleit. p. 16. 

tl Conf. Bernhardy, Emleit. p 26. 



48 

the writings of Addison and Pope, to find in them, or if he 
did not* find, to force upon them, a philosophical grammar ? 
No: he took them as he found them; specimens of our 
language in its finest bloom and vigour, but not certainly as 
specimens of its purity and correctness. So in Athens, while 
the mighty workings of democracy in the judicial and legislative 
courts were giving birth to such productions of literary excel- 
lence as the world has never yet surpassed, the little interests of 
grammar were comparatively unattended to : but when all that 
curious political machinery had been rendered inoperative by 
the strong arm of the Macedonian conqueror, real grammar 
rose upon its ruins, and Aristotle, resident at a royal court, 
began naturally to speculate about matters with which Plato 
never troubled himself while courts of a different description 
were in full operation, and were producing effects widely differ- 
ent from those of silent study about grammatical rules. Admit 
this theory, and our path in Grecian grammar becomes com- 
paratively easy and disentangled ; force us upon philosophical 
grammar by way of explaining the numberless anomalies in 
the Greek language, and simplifying its endless varieties, and 
what ensues ? First comes a general rule, then c an exception, 
which is to have the force of a general rule/ — with an excep- 
tion, it may be, to the exception. Next come 'deviations 
which are regular,' and ' deviations which are irregular' : then 
— 'very often, however,' — c nevertheless sometimes 1 — c yet 
here, however,' — ' further it is to be remarked, that it is as 
little necessary, always to shew determinately' &c. s much, 
however, seems here to depend on arbitrary choice,' &c. &c 
till philosophical grammar, like many other philosophies, 
seems on the point of bringing us into those comfortable 
regions, ' where nought is every thing and every thing is 
nought.' Now admiring, as all must do, the great learning 
and ingenuity with which Matthise first in modern times 
endeavoured to reconcile two things so discordant as dicas- 
terian and philosophic grammar, who can wonder at such 
admissions as these being continually elicited from him, or 



49 

that at the close of his first labours, he should express himself 
as ' still doubtful on many points/ (Pref. p. 30.) or that a new- 
edition of those labours should be given to the public ' with less 
confidence than the first.' (Ibid. p. 32.) Whether the learned 
waiter's thoughts still brood over ' a society of philosophical 
philologists/ who are to meet and decide upon the composi- 
tion of language, I know not ; but if Bayle were living, of 
whom it is said that that state of doubt which to most 
minds is so painful, was to him a source of intense delight, 
and such a meeting had been called, it is not difficult to 
know, when and w-here his mind w r ould have been in an earthly 
paradise. And why such meeting to be called at all ? Be- 
cause philosophic grammar will not allow in the person of 
writers of the Periclean age, w 7 hat our own great lexico- 
grapher did in his, who, when pressed to give a reason for 
some definition, which from its obscurity appeared to be 
highly philosophical, admitted instantly that philosophy had 
nothing to do with the matter, and that the whole was the 
effect of sheer ignorance and inattention e . 

Is Mr. Kennedy startled at these lax doctrines, as he will 
doubtless term them, or does he see in them a new proof 
of my habitual disregard for Grecian grammar, and fear lest 
the path should be narrowed, in which he evidently antici- 
pates much future reputation for himself? Whether such 
doctrines may lead to laxer notions of grammar or not, is 
matter of secondary consideration ; the primary duty is to 
prove the doctrines false in themselves : but whether so 
proved or otherwise, Mr. Kennedy himself need be under 
no alarm ; Greek grammar still offers fields of investigation, 
where even his comprehensive mind may find occupation for 
many a year to come. Let us, by a brief exhibition of what 
appear to be defects, whether in the introductory remarks, or 
details of that learned person, whom Mr. Kennedy seems 

' If the Greek writers could read Kuhncrs's three classes of Greek ' Anacolu- 
tliieen * (§. 851). 3.), which do we suppose they would themselves haw allowed 
to be the most genuine of the three ? 

1: 



50 

content at present to acknowledge as the first of gramma- 
rians, endeavour to see where those openings lie. 

The common chronological tables tell us, that in the year 
B. C. 526. ' learning was encouraged, and a public library 
built at Athens.' The German scholars, who leave nothing 
unexplored, have doubtless settled long before this, by whom 
that library was founded and bun% in what part of Athens 
it stood, what MSS. it contained, whether students had 
access to it after the fashion of the Bodleian, for mere pur- 
poses of reading and making extracts, or whether it assumed 
the nature of our circulating and lending libraries ; a verifi- 
cation of which latter assumption would assist considerably 
in accounting not only for the sudden and general outbreak 
of literature in Athens, but whence the common people 
derived that particular knowledge of various kinds, for which 
under present circumstances it is often so difficult to account ; 
as for instance^ that large acquaintance with mythic lore, 
which the choral strains of the tragic poets evidently sup- 
pose them to possess ; and that knowledge of their own and 
foreign poets, without the most intimate acquaintance with 
whom so much of the wit and humour of their comic poets 
must have been thrown away upon them. It will be suffi- 
cient however, for our present purposes, to divide this library 
into two great departments, one of prose and one of verse : 
a division which Matthiae has neglected to make in his * In- 
troduction,' and by neglecting which he appears to me some- 
what to impair the value of his subsequent details. And this 
division made, on whom in each department should the 
eyes of a modern Greek grammarian have been first fixed ? 
My own humble thoughts would have suggested — in the 
prose department, on the forensic writer Antiphon ; in the 
bard department, on the poet Solon. And why so ? Because 
as the one is the earliest of Attic poets known to us by any 
degree of reputation, so is the other not only the first Attic 
prose writer of any celebrity, but to all appearance the very 
first person who ventured to make Attic dialect a vehicle 



51 

for prose composition at all. The remains therefore of these 
two particular writers I should have thought a modern gram- 
marian would have examined with the utmost attention ; 
exploring every word and every combination of words in 
them, before he sought upwards how those words and their 
combinations came into the writings themselves, and down- 
tcards, what changes they underwent by the progress of lan- 
guage. Strange, however, to say, of Antiphon the learned 
Matthise observes not a word in his ' Introduction ;' and if any 
person can find more than half a dozen citations from him 
in his details, he will find more I believe than any other 
person has been able to do ; while of Solon, not a single 
citation is, I believe, to be found in the learned grammarian's 
details; and in his ' Introduction' he contents himself merely 
with remarking in what dialect his laws were written. — 
(Introd. p. 7.) 

But the case of Antiphon does not rest here. A reflecting 
mind would, I should have thought, have asked itself, how 
happens it that the earliest of Attic prose writers is a writer, 
and a writer only, for the courts of law? Is a lawyer usually 
the originator of a new department of literature ? or are the 
compositions of lawyers, generally speaking, models of com- 
position ? Blackstone's Commentaries must indeed, from the 
extreme beauty and elegance of their language, be at all 
times a subject of the greatest admiration ; but if instead 
of being written in the reign of George the Third, they had 
preceded the literature of Queen Anne, the Commentaries 
would have been a perfect prodigy. How and why then did 
Antiphon become what he was? The reader has already 
been prepared for the phenomenon. The administration of 
justice, which, till tho establishment of the Athenian demo- 
cracy, had been exclusively in the hands of the nobility, 
by that change in the government devolved entirely upon the 
humbler classes ; and as a sense of their increased power, or 
rather absolute sovereignty, came over the dicasts, nothing 
was more natural than that a new species of literature should 

E 2 



52 

emanate from the courts of law, and that it should early 
exhibit a very high degree of polish and refinement. 

But did Antiphon derive his style — and the question will 
be found to involve another defect in the learned gram- 
marian — solely from the courts of law ? The history of the 
times tells us, that the sophists, who already scenting like birds 
of prey what a democratic body could afford, were winging 
their flight from all parts to Athens, had had their share in 
his education, as well as that of other distinguished men in 
Athens ; the celebrated Gorgias being more particularly 
named as his instructor. And what had Antiphon learned, 
or at all events, what might he have learned, from him or 
them ? Not grammar certainly in . the strict sense of the 
word, but something in the construction of periods, which a 
modern writer on Greek grammar ought not entirely to have 
neglected ; nice balancings of sentences, antitheses of various 
kinds, rhythm of the most studied order, and verbal termina- 
tions, which approach closely to the modern system of rhyme f . 
If some difficulty existed in furnishing proofs of all this in 
Matthise's details whether from Plato's mimicries and imi- 
tations, or from the direct writings of Isocrates, still some 
allusion to the sophists and their syntactical doctrines seemed 
to be required in his introductory matter : but neither in- 
troduction nor details, as far as I am aware, furnish either. 

But why had Antiphon been left to originate Attic prose, 
and with what kind of prose had Attic ears been previously 
familiar ? Some attacks of Mr. Kennedy, to which I shall 
presently have to reply, oblige me to ask this question, and 
the answers given both here and there, will, I trust, shew that 
if I do not bow the knee so slavishly to Matthise, as Mr. 

f A love of rhyme or jingle in some shape seems natural to all languages, and 
to this love, I think, may in some degree be attributed that large body of anoma- 
lies in the Greek language which the grammarians are content to designate and 
excuse by the term attraction. It would require a larger body of examples 
than can here be given, to shew how nicely the Attic ear possessed itself by 
attraction of this jingle, without allowing the jingle itself to become too pre- 
dominant. The reader by consulting Rost, pp. 360, 1, will easily see by what 
means this was accomplished. 



53 

Kennedy apparently would have me do, still I have not 
been altogether so inattentive an observer of the peculiarities 
of the Greek language as he would make it appear; and that 
my dealings with the two words which still hang upon our 
hands were founded on some grammatical reasonings, whether 
those reasonings were correct or not. What dialect had 
hitherto been most agreeable to Athenian ears, the history 
of Herodotus gives sufficient indication. Himself a Dorian 
by birth, he ought naturally to have used the Doric tongue. 
Then why did he adopt the Ionic ? The answer seems clear : 
his history was meant rather for Athenian than any other 
readers ; for who but they had by their noble exploits in the 
Persian war furnished the noblest portion of it ? and why 
then should it not be composed in that dialect which as 
furnishing the nearest approximation to the old Attic, would 
naturally have most charms for Athenian ears ? For terming 
the style of Herodotus the nearest approximation to the old 
Attic, I have this reason : — Herodotus himself tells us 
(I. 142.), that there were four species or modifications of 
the Ionic ; and though he does not specify what those modi- 
fications were, a very probable conjecture may be formed. 
When monarchy came to an end in Athens in the person of 
the excellent and patriotic Codrus, his son or sons fled with 
a large body of emigrants to the western coast of Asia Minor. 
Without involving ourselves in any grammatical discussions 
about a primeval Hellenic language, it will be sufficient here 
to observe, that these sons of Codrus carried with them as a 
matter of course to their new settlements in Asia, the same 
language as they left behind them in Attica, and which 
may therefore be termed in the mother-country the old 
Attic, in the colonies the old Ionic. Leaving the parent- 
country to fashion, as she pleased, the old Attic into the 
middle or dicasterian, or by whatever name we may please 
to designate it, let us attend to our emigrants. What lan- 
guage they brought with them to Asia, we have seen ; and 
supposing them to have gradually adopted some of the forms 

B 3 



54 

of speech of the Asiatics among whom they came, this would 
form a second species of Ionic. A third change would be 
effected by the democratic forms of government — slight 
democracies when compared with those of Athens — into 
which the emigrants gradually threw themselves, while in- 
creasing traffic and intercourse with foreigners wonld tend to 
create a further change. The first and third of these (sup- 
posed) forms will be of most use to us in some further con- 
siderations ; at present it is more to our purpose to observe, 
that in one or other of these four forms, besides a consider- 
able body of poetry, there existed a large stock of prose 
writings, bearing the names of Cadmus, Hecatseus, Xanthus, 
Charon, Pherecydes, Hellanicus, &c. as their authors ; — writ- 
ings dedicated either to amusing fables or to historical nar- 
rations, which could not but have formed a most important 
portion of that public library to which we have called atten- 
tion, and which must have had some influence on Attic litera- 
ture, whether the humble details of grammar or more im- 
portant matters are concerned &. Of these writers, however, 
and their necessarily powerful influence on the Attic tongue, 
I find no mention whatever in Matthiae ; and as Mr, Ken- 
nedy's knowledge of these matters does not appear to extend 
very far beyond what Matthise furnishes him with, it is not 
improbable that some even of their names may for the first 
time here have reached him. 

One more observation will conclude these remarks on 
Matthias's management of the prose department of his great 
undertaking, and for which, with all deficiencies, the learned 
world are under such deep obligations to him. As it seems 
somewhat strange that under such important circumstances, 
his introductory matter should have made no reference what- 
ever to this great body of Ionic prose writers, so it seems 

8 Sec, on this subject, Bernhardy's Einleit. p. 9, &c. Kuhner, §. 859. 4. I 
content myself with observing that if Herodotus derived such bold ellipses as 
Kuhner and Matthiae exhibit (§. 720. 3. §. 456.) from democratic Ionic, my 
elliptic experiments on Aristophanic or democratic Attic are very harmless pro- 
ceedings indeed. 



55 

still more strange, that, in his Syntactical department, all 
reference to the Aristotelian writings, when Grammar had 
really begun to exhibit her form and presence among the 
Greeks, is ' designedly' avoided (Pref. 26). Now if Lowth, 
besides being the earliest investigator of English Grammar, 
as far as the writings of other persons are concerned, had, 
in his own writings, exhibited any thing like the depth, 
variety, and astonishing talent of the Stagyrite, it is natural 
to conclude, that any distant investigator of the principles of 
our own tongue would, instead of neglecting those writings, 
have made them the great land-mark of his reasonings. 
Something therefore seems left even in the prose department 
of Mr. Kennedy's great master, in which the pupil's com- 
manding talents may be displayed to advantage. Are no 
gleanings left for him in the poetic department ? or has 
Matthias exhausted that matter, whether general views or 
mere details are concerned ? 

How little use the great grammarian has made of the Attic 
poet, whose remains, small as they are, it might have been 
thought, would have been a sort of polar star to him, we 
have already seen ; and as, in his prose department, he ought 
apparently to have ranged between the Ionic writers and 
Aristotle, so perhaps — in his Introduction at all events — 
it would have been as well, if his poetic remarks had begun 
with Olen, and ended with the better writers of the Middle 
Comedy. But taking him even in his own range, which, as 
far as Athens is concerned, may be said to commence with 
the Homeric poems, and end with the Old Comedy, do we, 
besides the want of much larger and fuller information on 
Homer and Aristophanes themselves, desiderate nothing else 
in Matthias's view pf things in the wide interval between 
Homer and Aristophanes ? Thifl is not the place to enter 

largely into the subject of gnomic, epaenetic, and lyric poetry; 
one or two deficiencies, however, on a smaller scale, may here 
be briefly alluded to. Considering how much the drama 
formed the distinguishing feature of Attic literature, and how 
largely the iambic verse entered into dramatic composition, a 



56 

few remarks on Archilochus, as the inventor of that verse, 
or even a few quotations from his extant remains, might not, 
in a grammatical point of view, have been amiss. Again, the 
style and manner of Simonides approach so closely to those of 
the Attic h Comedy, that a still larger notice of him than of 
Archilochus would certainly not have been misplaced. I am 
not, however, aware that the learned grammarian has ever 
once named the former of these two poets, or that he has 
more than once, and that in the slightest manner possible, 
referred to the latter. But there is one among the inter- 
vening lyric poets, whose works if he had investigated in a 
deeper spirit than that of seeing whether they contained a 
specimen or not of pure Doric, (I. 10.) he would, I think, 
gradually have come to the conclusion, that a person who 
undertakes a philosophical investigation of grammar with a 
knowledge of Greek only, — however profound that know- 
ledge may be, — comes to his task but half-armed for his pur- 
pose. The lyric writer to whom I allude is Pindar. How 
strong an impression his poems had made on Attic ears, the 
frequent allusions of Aristophanes, and still more the pages 
of Sophocles, give evident proof. Difficult and complicated 
as the constructions of the latter poet continually are, I have 
endeavoured elsewhere to shew, that the best and almost 
only clue for explaining those constructions is to be found 
in the writings of that great Theban poet, which he had 
evidently studied with intense zeal. But the influence of 
Pindaric on Attic or Sophoclean construction is of little mo- 
ment, compared with the investigation as to. what foreign 
causes had been operating on the great lyrist himself; causes 
acting largely, not only on his modes of thinking, but acting 
largely also on the form and structure of language, in which 

h Bernhardy (to whom I have here been a little indebted) observes much to 
this effect: < Dieselbe Milderung epischer Analogieen und des Gebrauchs in 
edleren Leben gab noch Simonides wieder, der an Gewandtheit und Leichtigkeit 
des poetischen Ausdriicks besondcrs dem Archilochus glich, aber durch Gliitte 
und korrekte Priizision vorzugsweise mit dem Atticismus ubereinstimmte, 
und am langsten unter den Lyrikern im Attischen Weltleben sich behauptete.' 
JZinleit. 6. 






57 

those thoughts were conveyed to his wondering contemporaries. 
And what was the foreign influence to which allusion is here 
made? Can any one be at a loss to conjecture, who for one 
moment thinks of those Sidonian shores, from which the 
countrymen of Pindar originally came, and between which 
shores and those of Thebes it may, even amid so much wreck 
of ancient literature, be pretty satisfactorily i proved, that a 
constant intercourse had subsisted from the days of Cadmus 
to those of the great bard himself ? Phoenician literature 
itself may almost be said to have perished ; but one book, 
written in a kindred tongue, still remains ; and till some writer 
shall be found equally conversant with the Greek and Hebrew 
languages, and consequently be able to shew fully and dis- 
tinctly how much the former depends on the latter for an 
explanation of its peculiarities and idioms, it is evident that 
we are bound to be careful in our enunciations as to what is 
Grecian Grammar and what is not. But the grounds for 
caution do not rest even here. The researches of German 
scholars have discovered that, between their own powerful 
language and those of the Greek and Sanscrit, there exists 
so strong a similarity, that there can be little doubt of their 
being originally one and the same k ; and that consequently 
no person can properly be said to be grammatically master 
of the one, who is not grammatically master of all three. I 
promised in a former note to open upon Mr. Kennedy a 
view of things, which might enable him to supersede his 
predecessors, and has not that promise now been kept ! 
Schultens, Hartung, Herling, Becker, Bopp, and others have 
done much in their respective departments to facilitate these 
various investigations, but a master-mind is yet wanting to 
combine them into one great whole ; and to a person of Mr. 
Kennedy's sacred profession, perhaps the thought might sug- 
gest itself, that when He, " whose works are known to Him 

i This was largely done by the present writer in an * Introduction ' to the 
(Ed. Tyr. which, for reasons explained iu the advertisement, has not yet been 
made public. 

k See Kuhncr's Introduction to his Greek Grammar, and Dr. Wiseman's 
Lectures (ist. 2ud.). 



58 

from the beginning/ - had determined that the whole of His 
revealed word should either by direct communication, or by 
translation, exist in the Greek language, higher reasons than 
Philosophy has yet dreamed of might exist for giving that 
language a shape and form, tending to make it a subject of 
interest and investigation through all ages. It might further 
suggest itself to a person of his profession, that the Greek 
language now stands before us in two marked and distinct 
forms ; the one, the pride of philosophic grammarians, who 
besides seeing in it the perfection of human speech, justly 
refer to the works written in it as the consummation of human 
wisdom ; the other form far less philosophical and attractive 
in outward show, and in its contents of far narrower range ; 
and yet while the prouder works, and in the prouder form, 
are but in the hands of a few, those in the humbler form 
have spread from pole to pole, and are destined ere long, 
either in their original or translated form, to cover the face 
of the whole earth. Let Mr. Kennedy betake himself to such 
views as these of Greek Grammar, and he will perhaps admit 
that it is he, and not I, who seeks to narrow its range of opera- 
tion, or wish to throw contempt upon it. 

But it was in no such high thoughts as these that the 
remarks here submitted to the reader were originally com- 
menced; they were drawn from me, by a port — surely as 
ridiculous as it is arrogant — of an assailant, who with head 
erect, and eyes fixed as it were on the third heavens, said, 
or seemed to say, ' Yes, my friends, you are right ; that 
is the spot from which I fell ; you are at liberty to pay a 
temporary homage to Kuhner and Matthise j but there is one 
among you who in due time will perfect what they have 
left incomplete, and when the terms ' uncertainty ' and 
' anomaly 5 shall no longer be predicable of Grecian Grammar.' 
When that time comes, I must, like others, submit to the 
infallible Mr. Kennedy ; at present, as in a matter dis- 
putable and uncertain, I throw myself, as every other 
person does on similar occasions, into Voltaire's convenient 
maxim, ' Your cap was not made to give laws to my 



59 

turban/ and as to Greek Grammar — for any authority which 
you may bring forward to condemn me, I will produce one 
of equal authority to support me.' Let us, making further 
apologies to our friends a>ore and opyfj, try this operation on 
Mr. Kennedy, and see whether some of those stars, which 
have been so long blazing at my expense, will not thereby 
lose a little of their lustre. 

Ran. 821. ^^yx' &£yx 0Vt 

* iXeyxpv SC. 7rczp' avrov. [M.] such a construction as iXeyxecrOai. 
napd twos, is, to say the least, very uncommon in the best writers. 
The proper construction is eXtyxecrQai vno t l vos. [K.] 

Mr. Kennedy is a great authority, and doubtless his word 
ought to be omnipotent on such matters ; but — the construction 
in question is not mine, but the scholiast's ; it is adopted by 
Thiersch as well as myself, and philosophic grammar does 
any thing but frown upon us both for so doing. ' Instead 
of vtto, 9 says Host, c the Greeks frequently use the preposi- 
tions irpbs and napa, both with the genitive ; namely, irpbs, to 
designate an independent operation or a vigorous exertion 
of power, but irapa, to signify that something proceeds from 
the immediate vicinage, or from the internal or external 
means of an object.' — (Gr. Gr. p. 417.) See also Kuhner to 
the same effect, §. 615, 1, who gives an example from Plato, 
which is worth Mr. Kennedy's attention. Some Greek writer 
says, el /x?/ dpO&s Ae'yco, abv epyov Xafx/3dv€LV kcll eaetxein. 
Mr. Kennedy, it is now clear, has persons of more conse- 
quence than myself to convict in the present instance. 

\ eSp. 68l. KqO' OVTOL JJ.ZV b(i)p0b0K0V(TLV KCLTa Tt£VTl\KQVTa 
TaAaVTCL. 

* Kara to the amount of [M.] Translate, u by fifty talents at a 

time" and likewise in all the passages cited by Mr. Mitchell 

In the sense 'to the amount of/ Attic writers use the preposition 
cfe. [K.] 

The (liilieultic \s attendant on numeral prepositions in the 
Attic writers are somewhat greater than Mr. Kennedy seems 



60 

to be aware of. I beg therefore to whisper in his ear, first, 
that eis is rather a preposition of time than numbers, and is 
found more in historical than poetical writers, (Bernhardy, 
pp. 90, 216.); secondly, that his master in Greek grammar, 
Matthiee, speaks of it as applying more to ' round numbers' 
than specific amount. (Gr. Gr. II. 512.) The distributive 
power which Mr. K. assigns to Kara, Post (p. 380.) and Bern- 
hardy (p. 234.) assign to avd. What then is the power of the 
numeral preposition /card ? Mr. K. had looked (but without 
any acknowledgment) into Matthise, (II. 1017), and found that 
Kara ' particularly with numerals, is used to express the same 
as the Latin distributiva, when a certain number is continually 
recurring.' Had he looked into Bernhardy (p. 241.) or 
Kuhner (§. 607, 3, c), he would have found that I was at 
liberty to adopt either the sense which he himself assigns to 
the preposition Kara, or that sense which I had preferred. 
And why did I prefer that sense ? Because when a case is 
doubtful, I always prefer, for reasons which have already 
been made obvious, to go by that sense which is found in 
Herodotus ; and grammarians and lexicographers both agree, 
that the sense of Kara in the Ionic Herodotus comes far 
nearer to my explanation of it than Mr. Kennedy's. (Cf. 
Passow in voc. and Matthiae II. 1017.) More than enough 
has perhaps been said on this matter; but Mr. Kennedy's 
political tendencies, (too evident to be mistaken,) and a mali- 
cious inference which he draws from a slip of reference in my 
note to this passage (of which more hereafter), convince me, 
that had he been aware of this latitude of meaning in the 
preposition Kara, he would with equal readiness have turned 
upon me, and abused me for adopting his sense of the 
preposition instead of my own. ' What ! not satisfied with 
one solid bribe of fifty talents ; but they must have " fifty at a 
time !" Pretty cormorants indeed Mr. Mitchell makes of these 
orators and demagogues of antiquity !' I add, that instead of 
Mr. Kennedy's scanty reference to Dem. 819, 3, the student 
who wishes to make himself acquainted with Greek numeral 



61 

prepositions, will do well to consult Dem. contr. Aphob. 815, 
ult. to 817, 5. Also Dem. 918, 11. See also Hart. II. 222. 

Ran. 126. to0' tlvcu kcll cry aavrov. 
* supply iceXevov, you are recommended. [M.] Should Mr. Mitchell 
persist in editing Greek authors, he must renew his acquaintance 
with the Greek grammar, but it is better not to suppose any 
ellipse. [K.] 

From my translation of the passage, I presume that Mr. 
Kennedy gives me credit for knowing that thai, is in this in- 
stance an infinitive used for an imperative. As Mr. Kennedy 
rarely condescends to give any reasons for his statements, I 
am left to conclude, that such infinitives are considered by 
him as they are by Host, ' as absolute verbal ideas only, used 
frequently in Epic language, but rarely in Attic, and chiefly 
when the unformed language of children is to be imitated' 
(p. 470) ; a doctrine originally propounded, I believe, by 
Apollonius, surnamed the bilious, or difficult of digestion ; and 
ridiculed, as it well might be, by Hartung. But w r hy does 
Mr. Kennedy here desert his usual authority for such matters? 
If he had looked into Matthise, no friend, as we have seen, to 
ellipses, he would, in his numerous examples of this infini- 
tive-imperative, have found such admissions as these oozing 
out : in one instance, — ' eOeke is usually supplied ;* at another, 
— ' Set is usually supplied ;' while at a third, fx^irqao is sug- 
gested. (II. 944 — 5.) Does my KtXzvov, or as it ought to 
have been printed, /ceAeuet, i. e. KeAeurj, stand upon a lamer 
footing than Matthiae's IfleAe, ixztxvqao, or 8ei? The reader 
who so thinks may again consult Bernhardy, p. 358. or 
Kiihner, §. 644. 

Eq. 5. irXrjyas del 7rpo(rrpi/3erat rots ot/cerais. 

TTpovTpLfovQaL, affricare [M.] The correct translation is efficcre ut 
affricctur. [K.] 

Mr. Kennedy is evidently partial to a middle verb (how 
this partiality for a form of speech so essentially elliptic in its 
character is compatible with a general hostility to ellipses, is 



62 

difficult to say) ; I am not ; and for more reasons than one. 
I am unwilling, evident as Mr. Kennedy's democratic ten- 
dencies are, to hurt his feelings by putting this dislike on 
mere political grounds; and yet it seems a somewhat odd 
coincidence, that as the Attic people were proverbial in prac- 
tice for acquiring and appropriating to themselves what was 
not their own, so in their grammar the verbs most frequently 
found in a middle sense among them should be verbs of ac- 
quiring and l appropriation. On mere grammatical grounds, 
however, I see no reason why the middle verb should enjoy 
so large a share of Mr. Kennedy's favour. Modern philo- 
sophical grammar (for the ancient grammarians did not much 
trouble themselves about m him) has wrapped him up indeed 
in an attractive costume ; and what is the ingrate's return ? To 
throw it off as speedily as possible, and instead of a reflective 
to become an active n verb ; to say nothing of the facility with 
which in the mean time he allows active (Matth. II. 830.) and 
even passive forms to take his own place. (Host, p. 424 sq. 
Matth. 823 sq.) In dealing therefore with a middle verb, we 
are evidently dealing with a slippery person, and must shape 
our course accordingly. If in my mother-tongue I say, ' Til 
lay into that coxcomb* (not of course meaning Mr. Kennedy,) 
or, ' Fit have that coxcomb laid into* (Mr. K. again excepted,) 
I advance two propositions, in which no one can mistake me. 
But when the verb TTpoarpi^eaOai comes before us, possessing 
in itself the power of combining both these propositions, it is 
obvious that we must look to some external circumstance to 
guide us in our choice. c And now,' says Mr. Kennedy's cap, 
but without doffing as becomes it for the hint thrown out, 
6 1 have you under my thumb ; for look to V. 67, and you 
will see that Cleon did not Hog per se, but per alios : and that 

1 Cf. Bernhardy, p. 346. Kuhner, §. 396, /3. 

m Bernhardy, p. 342. 

n Even Kuhner, who has done wonders for the middle verb, and whose three 
spheres of mediality must have been to Mr. Kennedy, if he ever read them, as the 
music of the spheres, is obliged to admit a class of middle verbs where the 
reflexive character is so weak as in fact to amount to nothing, and another class, 
where this little cormorant, by assuming to himself the reflexive pronoun, com- 
promises all the theoretic rules which have been formed in his favour. §. 398. 



63 

settles the matter.' Not so, says my turban : look to V. 59, 

775, and the piece throughout, and you will find that if Cleon 

was not the regular ' tortor' of the establishment, he does 

quite enough in the amateur way to admit of my using the 

povTplfitvOai in an active sense.' ' Aye, but,' rejoins 

rtinacious cap, ' I have the great Mr. Kennedy in my 

.' < It may be,' replies my turban, ' but I have the far 

r Brunck on my side, who would not have translated 

u plagas assidue ineutit" if he had not seen the matter in 

precisely the same light that I do.' Once more on the power 

of the middle verb. 

Eq. 786. yvdaeTai 01W ayaQ&v avrbv rfj puaOcxfiopq irapz- 

KOTITOV, 

* napeKOTTTov have cheated. [M.] Translate 'used to cheat/ or 
1 were continually cheating/ [K.] 

With your leave, Mr. Kennedy, I shall do no such thing ; 
neither the act implied in the verb irapeKoiTTov, nor the 
rules of philosophic grammar generally, obliging me, I think, 
to depart from my own version of this imperfect. And 
first, what is the act implied in the verb 7rapaK07n-o/xcu, of 
which Mr. K. does not appear to have the remotest con- 
ception, though attention had been called to it again and 
again in at least three of my plays of Aristophanes? The 
context evidently shews that the reference is to that stern 
policy commenced by Pericles at the outbreak of the Pelopon- 
ian war, and followed up by Cleon, his successor in office; 
a policy by which the fruitful soil and rich farms of the 
Acharnian plain were converted into a sterile waste, the 
inhabitants being swept into the metropolis, with no other 
compensation for their losses and privations, than such a^> 
military or increased judicial pay ( paaOocpopa) would find 
them. And was this an image, which so warm a partisan 
for peace as Aristophanes shewed himself throughout that 
fatal conflict, would have put before his Demus, in the flick- 
ering, unsteady light of an imperfect tense, which Mr. K. 
adopts, or, would he have preferred, the actor first throwing 



64 

the most contemptuous tones of his voice into the word 
fjLLa0o(f)opa— the full, complete, and determined sense which 
I have given it ? Surely there cannot be a doubt. But will 
grammatical Greek admit of such an interpretation ? I answer, 
that democratic or dicasterian Grammar appears to have 
thought as little about the strict rights of meum and tuum. 
where verbs and tenses are concerned, as democratic j „ T em- 
inent did about more substantial rights. Verbs transitive 
interchanging with neuters, neuters with actives, and neuters 
with passives, actives with middle verbs, and middle verbs with 
actives, are things of frequent occurrence. And so again in 
tenses, — a present for an aorist (Matth. §. 504. 1.), an imper- 
fect for a present (§. 505. 2, 3.), a future for the present 
(§. 506. VI.), the aorist found where the perfect should pro- 
perly have been used (§. 497. Obs. §. 500.), a grand conspiracy 
among present tenses, perfects, futures, and aorists, to inter- 
change with each other, and accomplish a sense of which 
they may be in want (Id. §. 501.) — changes of this kind 
sometimes taking place according to philosophic Grammar, 
merely because the proper grammatical word was too un- 
wieldy in form to stand where it ought ° — Are such and many 
similar exhibitions to be found among Greek tenses, and my 
imperfect TTaptKOTrTojjLriv to be the only ( unchartered libertine ' 
among them ? c No/ says philosophic Grammar, stepping in 
to my relief; 'my doctrines do not so pinch you: for listen 
what those doctrines are, as explained by one of the acutest 
of my expositors, and merely observing that I italicise at 
pleasure as I quote them : " All rules here assigned on the 
usage of the tenses are in the principal points always observed. 
Yet we not unfrequently find them neglected even by the 
best authors, particularly in an alternation between the use 
of the aorist, and the use of the perfect, and chiefly of the im- 
perfect, the adoption of one or other of these forms being in 
many cases merely dependent upon the view of the speaker 

o Kuhner (§. 441. 6. Anm. 3.) thus accounts for an ungrammatical form in 
Demosthenes, which if / had used, Mr. Kennedy would have politely termed 
it, cobbler's Greek. 



65 

or writer. " — (Rost, p. 438.) And now,' continues philoso- 
phic Grammar, ' with which of the two tenses thrown to your 
choice, viz. a perfect and an aorist, do you propose to alter- 
nate, or exchange, if you prefer the term, your imperfect 
irapeKOTTTov V ' Can there be a doubt?' I modestly rejoin; 
'for, as an aorist intimates a transient and momentaneous 
action (Rost, 432. 437.)* and a perfect, an action completely 
past, yet so as to be, as it were, still present (Kiihn. §. 439. 1 .), 
and as my purposes require not the " now and then " cheat 
of Mr. K. but one continuous and still prevailing cheat, I 
naturally prefer the former.' ' Simpleton!' says philosophic 
Grammar, ' learn better the mysteries of my craft, and know 
that an aorist " may be used of an action completely finished, 
in which no alteration can be made ;" that it may be " used 
in order to express the action quite determinately, every 
doubt as to its truth and unalterableness being removed, as 
in Latin : Hoc tibi dictum volo" (Matth. §. 506. v.) There : 
now see whether any perfect throughout the Greek language 
can do for your purpose more than Matthiae's aorist dirov 
has done.' 

Does Mr. Kennedy charge me, as no doubt he will, with 
sophistically playing on grammatical definitions of tenses, 
rather than dealing with the actual tense before us ? Let us 
meet this charge also. Mr. K. has once, and but once, quoted 
Kuhner (Host, Bernhardy, Thiersch, Ellendt, Hartung, 
Dissen, Bremi, and many others, who have contributed of 
late to the science of grammar, he does not appear to know 
even by name) : I presume therefore that he knows some- 
thing of that grammarian's works. Let him turn then to 
§. 441, and he will find something about an imperfectum, 
which Kuhner terms, the i schilderndc, darsteUcndc, wulvndc 
Zeitform,' which would answer all my purposes, had they 
not been already established ; and if after that he harps upon 
Matthiae, let him peruse the latter's opening lines at §. 508, 1, 
and §. 513. Obs. 2, and he will still find himself worsted. 

Great, then, as Mr. Kennedy's acquirements may appear 

F 



66 

to himself in the middle verb, it seems that three conclusions 
may be drawn from what has passed: ist, that he ' has 
taught himself (ibtbd^aro) much c windy wisdom p' on this 
matter ; 2nd, that if he ' has caused ' the boys of others' ' to be 
taught 5 (ZbLbagaTo) similar doctrines, he is putting into their 
hands a species of grammatical sophistry and thimble-rigging, 
which is not very creditable to himself, and may be worse 
than superfluous to <lthem; and, 3dly, that it is particularly 
incumbent on me, who in my title-page have put two dan- 
gerous weapons into his hand, to remind him — and in the 
language of Grammatical Philosophy — 'that though the in- 
strument be determined from the beginning, yet that the 
manner of cutting is to be present to the person cutting 
through the whole operation.' (Matth. §. 501.) 

And now to go back to those two little ellipses from which 
we have so long strayed, and with which we found Mr. Ken- 
nedy dealing in so summary a way. 

What are Mr. Kennedy's objections to elliptic forms he 
does not deign to inform us. Why Matthiae viewed them 
with a jealous eye (§. 635. extr.) may be more easily con- 
jectured. When that learned writer's grammatical labours 
first commenced, Latin Grammar enjoyed a vogue which 
is not now the case ; and the author of a Greek Grammar, 
who saw, or thought he saw, that much of that labour was 
caused by the previous predominance of Latin Grammar, and 
the adoption of 'many, and, for the most part, groundless 
ellipses' to explain the former by the latter (Pref. p. 29.), 
may naturally be supposed to have transferred some part 
of the ill-feelings thus engendered to the ellipse itself. Be 
that as it may ; certain it is, that having once officially dis- 
charged himself of the ellipse (§. 635.), he rarely names it 

P Soph. Antig. 354. auc/udev <\>p6vr]^a . . e8i8ct£aTo. ' That is not the true sense 
of ayefi6ev,* exclaims Mr. Kennedy. Very true : its true sense shall come upon 
Mr. K. in another shape. Cf. infr. p. 90. 

q xph 5' o#7ro0, f 6(TTis apTi<ppcav irstyvx' *vyp9 
iraidas 7T€ purees &c5i5c£(7Ke<r0ai crocpovs. 

Eurip. Med. 296. 



67 

again throughout his great work, though continually making 
use of it under some covert form or expression (§. 295, 1. 2. 
§. 428. 1. §. 4 6 5 . 3. §. 315, Obs. §. 516, B. §. 517, Obs. 4. 
§• 533> 0bs - 2 - §• 534> 0bs - 4- *■ §• 535. °bs. 1. 3. p. 931. 
&c. &c.) 

How much injury is thus done to one of the most striking 
features of the Greek language, the reader will better under- 
stand by perusing either the general observations of such 
men as Bernhardy and Kvihner, or the isolated remarks which 
break forth so continually in the pages of Hartung. My own 
small doings in this way, and which at so early a period 
of my career left me open to Mr. Kennedy's remarks (Ach. 
v. 24.), arose out of political reflections (for politics will and 
ought to intrude upon ns in every page of Aristophanes). 
That a short, concise, elliptic form of speech would be a dis- 
tinguishing characteristic of a busy, bustling, self-important 
population like that of Athens, the general workings of 
human nature would have informed us, had not the pages of 
the great comic poet, the faithful expositor of the language 
as well as actions of the sovereign multitude, remained to 
shew that such was actually the case. Of many of these 
elliptic forms, more particularly such as assumed a pro- 
verbial character, or in which the verb was omitted, the sense 
is now entirely lost : but in many others, where was the best 
chance of filling them up ? It appeared to me, in the pages 
of Herodotus and Homer ; in the first, because the language 
in which he wrote being originally the same as the old 
Attic — subsequently modified as we have seen by such 
changes as much traffic and a light form of democratic govern- 
ment would introduce — it formed the best link between the 
old Attic, of which we have no remains, and the Attic in 
which Aristophanes wrote r ; in the second, because besides 

r Will the reader allow me to present a specimen of two ellipses thus filled up 
in our own language, though the story on which it is founded rests, I fear, on no 
better authority than the common jest-books ? In one of these works of plea- 
santry, it is stated that a witness, under cross-examination before the great lord 

- F 2 



68 

the general prevalence of Ionic forms in him, his poems 
constituted the great schoolbook of the Athenians, and con- 
sequently could not but have a decided influence on their 
language. The theory was at all events a harmless one, more 
particularly, as it left untouched those rules of language by 
which grammarians had determined the elliptic forms them- 
selves. Thus in reference to the word opyfj. Instead of con- 
tenting myself with seeing the word in an adverbial form, as 
Matthiae, and apparently Mr. K. after him, have done, I gave 
several instances of it in the elliptic form, and then, from 
two passages in Herodotus (I. 141. VI. 85.), shewed how the 
ellipse might have been originally filled up, either by the 
participle ky6[X€vos or the participle yjp&ixtvos. And am I 
wholly without support in taking this view of the subject? 
The quarter to which I with most confidence looked for it 
has, I must confess, deserted me. Bernhardy, great as his 
doctrine of subsumption has made him in the development 
of nominative cases, and still greater in my eyes for the 
philosophic view which he has taken of the dative, which he 
more than once terms the Ionic case, would, I thought, have 
borne me through with this doctrine ; but he, like Matthiae, 
apparently sees nothing more in such datives than an adverbial 
form. Host, however, and Kiihner give me in return pretty 
nearly all that I want : the first by the following declaration ; 

Mansfield, made use of the expression, • But, my lord, I did him.' l Did him,' 
said that eminent judge, * what does the man mean ?' * Why, my lord, I was 
down upon him.' It is unnecessary to pursue the dialogue further; but if 
Pope's * Murray' reflected, as he most probably did, on the first of these two 
c flowers of speech,' his reflections most probably proceeded thus : ' Did him ! 
that must mean, " he did something to him ;" but what something ? Why, 
something that he did not expect to have done to him.' Now the last and fullest 
of these three forms is what we may suppose an old Attic to have used under 
the quiet and excellent reign of good king Codrus, when people, under the 
security of monarchy, could express themselves leisurely and fully ; the second, 
accompanied by a significant shake of the head, would have done for the half- 
democratic Ionian: while the complete ellipse, borne out by a shake of the head, 
and a knowing wink of the eye, would have belonged to the lowest of Athenians, 
when Athens had become what Burke would term, ' pure, unsophisticated, de- 
phlegmated, defecated democracy.' 






69 

' The participles ex<«>i>, aywv, <f)£po)v, xpd>ixtvos, are frequently 
translated in English by the preposition with ; for the Greeks 
use these participles to designate certain kinds of connexion 
more accurately and demonstratively than can be done by a 
preposition/ &c. (p. 492.) ; the second by applying the pre- 
position avv to datives of this kind, §. 586, Anm. 

If I do not carry the reader through one or two more 
specimens of thus filling up ellipses, as Vesp. 580. (where my 
view of the matter has the sanction of Brunck's s interpreta- 
tion), and the bolder experiment on genitives of price Eq. 
630., (and for which I do not despair of some day having 
Bernhardy's and Struve's sanction, versed as both are in 
Ionic and Epic forms), it is because I am fearful of weary- 
ing him, and because a piteous voice is asking, ' And how 
long is the elliptic "£2ore to be neglected, while this babble 
about Ionic and Epic forms is continued ? And are you too, 
like Hartung (II. 172), afraid of dealing with me in this 
particular instance ? But I scorn you both. I know my 
rights in grammar, as well inceptive as suspensive, and it 
shall go hard but this barbarian shall know them both too. 
Listen to me, Mr. Kennedy, ("florc takes up Hosfs Greek 
Grammar, and reads as follows :) " If the principal propo- 
sition stands in a causal combination with the dependent 
proposition, so that the state denoted in the dependent ap- 
pears as a consequence of the event expressed in the prin- 
cipal, the dependent proposition takes Arte in combination 
with the infinitive." p. 474. What consequences do not follow 
in the present instance, because such and such things have 
not previously been done, we shall presently see. And thus 
far for what grammarians term my inceptive rights : now for 
my suspensive. It ill becomes a particle of my gravity and 
dignity to indulge in puns and plays of words ; but having 
'Hosted' you on one side, Aristophanic language obliges 



s Atque si his non moveamur, libcros cxtcmplo protrahit, filias et filios 
manu ducens. 



70 

me to * turn and do you brown on the other : therefore, 
listen again, Mr. Kennedy, ("flore takes up the second volume 
of Matthice, and reads from p. 915. as follows :) " Originally, 
&are seems to have served to explain a tovto, ravra, or ovt<o, 
which had preceded. This served to increase" — observe 
me carefully, Mr. Kennedy — " this served to increase atten- 
tion to what followed, and hence 5 ' — but it is needless to 
quote further ; let us apply these doctrines to what is before 
us. Dicseopolis, i. e. the worthy citizen of Athens, has made 
a separate peace with the Lacedaemonians. The Acharnians, 
indignant that any Attic citizen should make peace with so 
bitter a foe, fill their laps with stones, and ask each other, 
"Why are we (so) sparing of our implements, as not to" — 
What ? Now there lies my suspending power : thousands of 
anxious spectators are listening with breathless impatience to 
know what consequences are to follow. But no : my suspending 
power is on the speaker's lip, as well as the spectators' ears : 
and neither lip nor ear is of any service to their owners, till 
the suspending power released, tongues and ears regain their 
liberty, and then — a roar of laughter breaks forth, which, 
crossing the iEgean, disturbs Persian satraps at their meals, 
and makes the great king demand, "In the name of Oro- 
masdes, what can those democratic scoundrels be laughing 
at so lustily V 9 And all this, Mr. Kennedy, you are so far 
from comprehending, that you actually dismiss from your 
quotation the words in which the cream of the joke is con- 
veyed. v H/xot. <$>ev fad. I have had my (grammatical) wrongs 
as well as others in the most philosophic of languages ; but 
to have this gem wrested from me, merely because I have 
not given it the setting which Herodotus and Sophocles 
have u done, is beyond the power of human, I should have 
said, conjunctive nature to support. Ylanom^ana'iiiia'na'n'naTiai !' 
("i2<rre falls deliquescent into the arms of *£ls and "On, who 

t Arist. LySo 840. gov ipyov efy tovtou OTTTCLV kcu (TTp€(j)€LV. 
u Herodot. III. 105. Soph. Antig. 96. nciarofxai yhp ov \ rocrovrov oi»5ev ojctc 
fxrf ov KaXobs 6av€?i, 



71 

supply the usual restoratives ; sal volatile, thumpings on the 
back, and hortatory and admonitory speeches — < Cheer up ' — 
* Don't be down-hearted ' — t Think of your great suspending 
powers ' — 6 Consider how many infinitives of persuasio?i, and 
incitement, and icill, and strkiyig, &c. (Host 473. Matth. II. 
915.) look up to you, and don't trouble (I speak elliptically) 
about the like of him ; a Hun ! a Goth ! Kennedy the Com- 
prehensive !' At these last words, — but what need to inform 
the reader of their effect ? how "Glare springs upon his feet, 
laughs immoderately, &c. &c. Tclvtcl \x\v ovv 7re7raio"0a> Tjfuv, 
kcu lacos Ikclv&s exei. — Plato. Let us now resume the regular 
order. 

296. ZgapaaaTt. 

For the medical meaning of this word, see Hippocrates. [M.] 
An injunction more easy to give than for the student, even a medi- 
cal one, to obey. The inquisitive will find it in Dr. Donnegan's 
Lexicon. [K.] 

I have nothing, that I am aware of, to do with this note, 
except to congratulate the medical world on this discovery, 
and award their proper honours to the two accoucheurs who 
have brought the word into light. For v Dr. Donnegan : 

Puisse-t-il voir doctas 

Suas Ordonnancias 

Omnium Chirurgorum 

Et Apotiquorum 

Remplir Boutiquas. 

For Mr. Kennedy : 

Vivat, vivat, cent fois vivat 
Doctor, qui tam bene parlat ; 
Mille, mille annis et manget et bibat, 
Et seignet et tuat ; 

Le Malade Imaginaire. Intermede 3. 

v When I say, that I have never seen Dr. Donnegan's Lexicon, the learned 
writer will, I am sure, acquit me of meaning any disrespect to him by the levity of 
the above note. To .Air. Kennedy I have, of course, no apologies to make; * qui 
admouent amice, docendi sunt; qui inimice insectantur, repellendi.' Cicero. 



72 

myself firsts others i by leisure :' for instead of playing with 
Mr. K., as I do, they would stick him at the first onset. 

468. (TfJUKpA. 

The first syllable of this word, as also piKpa, which in other poets 
is sometimes short and sometimes long, is in Aristophanes always 
elongated. [M.] The first syllable of this word is never shortened 
by any classical poet &c. [K.] 

Why this word in Italics ? Did I say to the contrary ? 
I had gone, long before, to the same source as yourself, 
Mr. Kennedy, for the true doctrine on the subject ; and 
without stealing (it may be) a remark about Menander, and 
parading it as my own. See Maltby's Thesaurus in voc. 

487. airiboTO. 

A profusion of examples of the verb cmohoa-Qai (to sell) has been 
furnished by Kidd in his Dawes. Mr. Kidd is too well-read a 
scholar not to be aware, that the general recompense of such labour 
is to be informed, that some of the most valuable instances have 
been omitted. Add &c. [M.J It is difficult to understand how 
one example of such a word from a classical author can be less 
valuable than another ; but I take this opportunity &c. [K.] 

Before speaking of ' examples ' more and less valuable, 
let me be allowed to observe, that had Mr. Kennedy possessed 
the least sense of pleasantry, he would have seen that 
nothing more than a little piece of banter on an habitual 
trick of small scholars was intended by the first part of this 
note. The same feeling would have led him to be more 
indulgent to a note on which he pounces in my ' Clouds ' 
(v. 203), and where a person less saturnine would have seen 
that the writer of that note also was merely laughing in 
his sleeve, and that virtually the right interpretation of the 
passage was assigned to Schutz. And is grammatical an- 
notation of so very serious and solemn a nature, that a little 
merriment is to be wholly excluded from it ? I know, from 
Aristophanes, who shrink most instinctively from any exer- 
cise of the higher qualifications of wit and humour ; viz. those 



73 

who practise sophistry with things, as we found Mr. Kennedy 
inclined to practise sophistry with ivo?*ds ; and hence perhaps 
his stipulation at the outset of this combat, that all this gram- 
matical trifling should wear a grave aspect. But, if some 
little pleasantry has been lost on Mr. Kennedy, it is equally 
clear that much honest labour has been thrown away upon 
him also ; for I was in hopes that I had given proof, not only 
in this particular instance., but throughout my whole five 
plays of Aristophanes, that examples of words drawn from 
classical authors might be made more valuable in two modes : 
first, by giving a decided preference to those which had a 
moral or useful tendency in them ; secondly, by drawing the 
examples as much as possible from writings more particularly 
in unison with the subject under discussion. For instance : 
Was the subject of a play of Aristophanes connected with the 
ecclesiae, or deliberative assemblies of the Athenians ? My 
examples were derived as much as possible from the speeches 
of her orators and statesmen. Did the subject bring me into 
the dicasteria of Athens ? I went to her rhetoricians and 
forensic writers for illustrations. For a similar reason I 
searched the philosophic writings of antiquity for examples 
of words when the ' Clouds ' was under my hands ; and to 
furnish the notes and illustrations to the * Frogs,' I read 
through the whole of the ancient tragic drama at least twice. 
The ' Knights ' offering, in almost every scene, some curious 
term in the culinary art, I sifted Athen^eus in order to ex- 
plain my author more satisfactorily ; and as I wished to 
amuse young students, and soften the harsh pictures and 
political acrimony displayed in the original, I preferred to 
give large and liberal extracts from that amusing and valu- 
able compiler ; a liberality, for which Mr. K. rewards me with 
one of his sardonic grins. If Mr. Kennedy did not observe 
this studied peculiarity in my verbal illustrations, where is his 
critical tact ? If he did, where is his candour in not con- 
fessing it ? It was a source of considerable labour to me, and, 
from a discerning and candid critic, it would, I think, have 



74 

elicited one little word of commendation. With regard to 
the two examples which I gave of the word anohoadai, 
the one from iEschines was, I thought, more valuable than 
any of those furnished by Kidd, on account of the participle 
€vpl(tkovtos connected with it. As to the example drawn 
' from the fierce oath of democracy' in Andocides, I thought 
it might be of some value to those who had not yet imbibed 
democratical feelings : did that very circumstance make it 
less valuable and distasteful to Mr. Kennedy ? 

492, — rjv 5' av rj tto\ls irkta 
# * * 

IMcrOov bibo/JLevoVj UaXkabt&v yjpvaov^vcdv , k. t. A. 

UaXkadicov xP v<TOV l x * V(OV ' * Gilded images of Pallas. [M.] This is 
one of the cases in which Mr. Mitchell displays a total disregard 
of the value of the Greek tenses. His translation impairs the vivid- 
ness of the picture in which the action of gilding is represented as 
going on. [K.] 

And why did not Mr. Kennedy double-star me, for leaving 
him to find this out? It might indeed be objected, that 
among a people so thoroughly naval as the Athenians, images 
of Pallas ready gilded would superabound at all times, and 
that the prospect of a coming war only brought into the face 
of day what had hitherto lain concealed in the back shop. 
But Mr. K.'s translation is so much more in keeping with 
the bustle of the original, that there can be no doubt of its 
infinite superiority. But still — 'guardons-nous des systemes, 
mes chers Velches ' — it does not follow, that because Mr. K. 
is here right in his participle, he is always so. 

559* o KoLtrvpas kcll Aa/xaxos, 

oh VT? ipCLVOV T€ KCU yj>£&V 7Tp(ir]V 7T076, 
ddcniep CLTTo'vLTTTpOV €K^4oVT€S tcnrtpCLS, 
aTTCLVT€$ e£lOTG> TTapfjVOVV ol <f)t\OL. 

This may have been a calumny on Lamachus. We learn from 
Plutarch (see Elmsley's note on this line, and Thirl wall's Greece, 



75 

•III. 369.), that Lamachus was poor, bat honourably so. Mr. 
Mitchell, in his long note about Lamachus, ought not to have sup- 
pressed this. [K.] 

To be discussing at this time of day, whether a man named 
Lamachus was rich or poor, may at first seem a trespass on 
the reader's patience : but Lamachus was no unimportant 
person in his time, and the veracity of a man like Aristophanes 
must be of some importance at all times. A few r words there- 
fore on this subject cannot be misplaced. The great Hooker 
tells us, ' The highest flames are always the most tremu- 
lous ;' in other w^ords, none are so tremblingly alive to moral 
consequences, and what their fellow-creatures think of them, 
as those whom the inward workings of genius in early life 
assure that they are born to make a strong impression on 
their own as well as succeeding ages. A great satirist more 
particularly knows, that his only strong hold on the public 
mind, is truth ; cut that golden lock from him, and his 
moral power is gone. We might venture therefore on 
general grounds to say, that Aristophanes did not here utter 
a calumny on Lamachus ; but there are more particular rea- 
sons w T hich ought to bring us to a similar conclusion. Mr. 
Kennedy knows, or ought to know, that the play in which 
this supposed calumny occurs, was performed before natives 
of Athens only, the time of year not admitting the presence 
of strangers : he ought further to be aware, that from the 
nature of Athenian institutions such a thing as privacy was 
utterly unknown ; every man's business, and the contents of 
every man's purse — why full or why empty — were nearly as 
well known to his neighbours as to himself: why then 
should Aristophanes have voluntarily uttered a calumny, of 
which every spectator present could have instantly convicted 
him ? And upon what authority is this charge of calumny 
founded ? Upon the authority of a man who lived five or 
six centuries after the event, who from his intense appetite 
for anecdote and gossip is, under any circumstances, a very 
fallible witness, but who, from his known preference of 



76 

Menander to Aristophanes, must be in this case a very 
suspicious witness. Every one must love Plutarch for his 
general dispositions, and respect him foi: his multifarious 
knowledge, but as an authority against Aristophanes it is 
fair that the above remarks should first be taken into con- 
sideration. The remainder of Mr. Kennedy's note on this 
matter of Lamachus I for the present suppress. That the 
person who would, by insinuation at least, convict Ari- 
stophanes of a calumny, should by insinuation also impeach 
his editor as a falsifier ', was in the course of things : but of 

this hereafter. 

* 

656. ZvTCLvff ayop&fav ttclo-l Tiekoirovv^crCoLs 
e£e<rn kclI MeyapeOcrt kclI Botcortots 
icj) g> re 7TG)A.eu> irpbs e/xe Aaiiayto Se yLrj. 

* Aa/id^G) Se firj (efeori.) So sup. $69. Aa/id^o) $6 pr} (foypvrro).) 

[M.] 

The double punishment which I invoked for myself in a 
preceding remark is here inflicted on me without any invoca- 
tion to that purpose. 6 How so V says the reader ; ' I see 
but the — usual — star. 5 Then I must enlighten my gentle ques- 
tionist. If he is accustomed to newspaper phraseology, he 
must be well aware of a certain person called ' the oldest man 
alive.' While things go smooth, this hoary monster lies 
perdu. But is the public to be c frighted from its propriety ?' 
up starts this oldest of men to do the bidding. So verbal 
critics, when they mean to be particularly castigatory of some 
unfortunate editor, have in reserve a young monster, called 
a sixth-form boy, who is made use of on the occasion. Both 
these operations are now brought to bear upon me, after a 
fashion, which I thought had been dropped since the days 
when Chaucer sang, 

■ Therefore with wilde hors he did him draw, 
And after that he hong him by the law :' 

that is, sixth-form law. And why this double severity ? 






77 

Because, says Mr. K. But it is better to quote, as usual, 

his own words. 

' Had Mr. Mitchell been silent here, credit would have been 
given him for knowing how the ellipse in both cases was to be sup- 
plied. The manner in which he has done it violates the fundamental 
principles of the language/ 

Now, as far as I can speak of a very distant transaction, no 
idea about the ellipse here entered my mind. Had such 
been my intention, I think I should have added something 
about the difference between the particles ov and /xtj, a differ- 
ence constituting one of the subtlest portions of philosophic 
grammar. I could almost depose upon oath, that having 
occasion to turn back to v. 569, and finding the verb /cr/purro) 
at the beginning of a very long sentence, I thought it as 
well to recall the student's attention to that fact without 
any regard to the ellipse, which I concluded he would fill 
up himself; and that the business might be done complete, 
I prefaced the matter by recalling the verb e£eori to his 
thoughts. But if Mr. K. insists that my mode of putting 
the thing ties me to the ellipse, I am prepared to argue the 
matter with him even on that ground, and in either case. 
The first indeed involves but little difficulty. The student 
has only to form the compound idea of -nuktiv, ayopa&iv 
into a simple one by such a constructional process as Soph. 
Antig. 1079. and Arist. Ran. 156. afford, and his ellipse is 
pretty clear before him ; or if any difficulty lies in the par- 
ticle J*?/, that will be explained by the form of the second 
elliptical expression to which I now address myself. To the 
eye (and Mr. Kennedy's eye, stone-blind when it ought to 
see any thing to my advantage, cf. infr. p. 90, is sharp-sighted 
enough when any thing is to be seen to my disadvantage), 
to the eye my language seems to involve me in a solecism ; I 
say, seems, because I am not sure, that even in direct Greek, 
jx7j cfeori, instead of ovk e^eort, would be an entire violation 
of fundamental principles in this most anomalous language 
(cf. Plat Rep. 365, C. Herodot. II. 64. Xen. Anal). IV. 
4, 15.) : but in elliptic Greek, and more particularly in 



78 

sentences like the present, where we are dealing with a poet, 
not a prose-writer, I laugh to scorn the grammatical philo- 
sophy which would tie me down to such a nicety. All 
that Aristophanes or his contemporaries knew of Grammar as 
h science, has, I believe, been faithfully reflected in that scene 
in his ' Clouds,' where Socrates, as the representative of the 
Sophists, details those few grammatical doctrines which from 
other sources we found the Sophists to possess ; and as for 
the philosophy of grammar, the only philosophy for which he 
wrote, or for which his hearers cared, was, as I have pre- 
viously shewn, the philosophy of sounds ; and do not our 
own ears tell us that, in the present instance, sound was satis- 
fied by substituting the prohibitory [xrj for the positive ov ? 
(cf. Hart. II. 77). The interchange thus made was no doubt 
that of ordinary colloquial life ; but were it otherwise, had 
Aristophanes no right to consult the structure of his verse 
by such a substitution ? Are anomalies of a greater kind to 
be allowed to poets c in mere conformity to the exigency of 
verse w ,' and is Aristophanes to be here restricted in the 
anomaly of interchanging /xt) with ov ? Again, does Mr. K. 
imagine that Greek particles are to be looked at only in 
individual, and not also in syntactical forms ? If he does, I 
recommend him to look into a very ingenious chapter in 
Bernhardy x , where, though this individual case is not in- 

w Rost p. $66. See also Matth. §. 201, 9. §. 527. Obs. 3. 

x Anhang : von der syntaktischen Partikellehre. Mr. Kennedy will do still 
better to enlarge bis notions of Greek particles by reading Hartung's ' Lebre 
von den Partikeln,' who pronounces tbis department of the Greek language to 
be at present a mere wilderness (Vorrede, p. 6.) ; c sheer ignorance, or uncer- 
tainty and fluctuation prevailing over the whole subject.' (Einleit. 49). With 
regard to the particle more immediately under consideration, I recommend to 
Mr. K., besides an attentive perusal of Hartung's entire dissertation on the 
subject, the following detached observations : c Aber wer wird die Sprache 
beschriinken, und ihr wehren wollen, nach Bedurfniss dlese und jene Niian- 
cirungen des Ausdrucks anzubringen ?' II. 140. Again : c Die Partikel fify ist 
an keineu Modus gcbunden, nicht an den Optativ, noch an den Conjunctiv, 
noch an dem Imperativ.' II. 147. Thiersch's definition (§. 300. n. 3.) may also 
be taken into consideration : ' /xtj verneint nicht selbststiindig und unmittelbar, 
sondern in Beziehung auf etwas Anderes, sey es dass ein Fall, eine Bedingung, 
oder Absicht gesetzt, oder dass ein Wunsch, Wille, Befehl, eine Furcht, Besorg- 
niss oder Fiirsorge ausgednickt werde.* 



79 

eluded, he will find something to give him a larger know- 
ledge of Greek particles than he appears to possess at pre- 
sent. And so much for the star-brand. Let us now turn 
to the schoolboy knout inflicted on me. Mr. K. continues, 

■ Schoolboys of the higher forms will hardly thank me for telling 
them that ncoXelv is to be supplied in this line ; Traikciv ayopa&iv in 
the former.' 

They would be very grateful creatures to my mind, if they 
tendered him any thanks, at least as far as the single word 
wkziv is concerned. That grammar of the voice, with which 
Mr. Kennedy does not seem much acquainted, would have 
taught him that the words icf) <S re TiwAetz/ irpbs e/xe are 
merely y parenthetical, and that the important verb in the 
sentence is dyopd^tv. The Peloponnesians, Megarensians, 
and Boeotians were not likely to sell, unless they found some- 
thing in the new market to buy. Dicaeopolis would there- 
fore naturally sit upon the stage, with a comfortable assort- 
ment of Attic wares about him, for the purpose of traffic 
(iTcokelv ayopa(€iv) ; and if Mr. Kennedy had considered who 
it is that in the course of the drama sends to buy thrushes 
and a Copaic eel in the new market, he would have seen that 
the verb dyopd^tv applies to Lamachus, as well as the Pelo- 
ponnesians and Boeotians. Eventually indeed, the only ware 
which Dicoeopolis disposes of, is a little calumniator, called 
Xicarchus, at once hollow and chinkey. What such an article 
may be worth in the market at the present day, Mr. Ken- 
nedy's respectable publishers have perhaps begun to learn. 

771. — oaoi QeifiaOtv av\r]Tal uapa. With Mr. Kennedy's 
note on this passage I have little to do, except to thank him 
for a piece of information which I did not require. Passow's 
inaccuracies of reference had been familiar to me long before 
Mr. Kennedy's admonition on the subject. I have silently 
corrected many in my notes ; and if Mr. K. will furnish me 

y How much the particle re cuters into Homeric parentheses, see Hartung, 

1.77. 



80 

with a portion of his college library, many more shall be 
corrected. And now, gentle reader, I have gone through 
the whole of Mr. Kennedy's ' Remarks ' on my first play, 
with a few drawn from other plays to boot, and of course 
I feel as mortified and angry as the speaker in the Hindoo 
drama : — 

Madh. I am angry with this staff. 

Daih. Why so, Madharya ? 

Madh. Because it presumes to be so straight, when I am 
so crooked. 
Impertinent stick ! 

We now proceed to the ' Knights ;' for though Mr. K. 
was not necessitated to follow my arrangement of the plays, 
I feel bound to follow his. 

KNIGHTS. 

Whoever observes how Mr. Kennedy treats me in his title- 
page, and how handsomely I have armed and mounted him 
in mine, must doubtless conceive a wonderful opinion of my 
generosity. Readily as it might be thought I should catch at 
any compliment in my present shattered condition, truth 
obliges me to say, that to any such compliment I have not the 
slightest claim, the whole having been done, in homely 
phrase, in the way of business. Whatever other qualities of 
his lion-steed Mr. Kennedy possesses, one certainly he is not 
without, that of knowing how to take the lion's share : 
hence of the 9^ pages dedicated to my ' Knights' he appro- 
priates six to a dissertation of his own on the particle eW. 
c And a comfortable refreshment it must be to you,** says some 
compassionate reader, ' after such a mauling, to find your 
assailant in a sound repose !' Why the reader should con- 
nect ideas of sleep with a dissertation on such a subject by 
Mr. Kennedy z , it is difficult to say, unless that having found 

z That Mr. Kennedy may not include me among the sleepers, I beg to say 
that I have not yet read a word of his dissertation ; and that from no feelings of 



81 

himself nodding over my own long note on philosophic 
and democratic grammar, he concluded that a deep sleep 
was the invariable result of all such operations. But sup- 
posing my tormentor in such a predicament, is my position 
a whit more enviable I Ah, gentle reader, you are evi- 
dently a novice in such matters. A short extract from a little 
MS. in my possession entitled, ' My first Mouse,' will en- 
lighten you as to what the sleep of verbal critics and gramma- 
rians is * Never shall I forget that moment ! Hitherto 

I had merely existed; now I lived. To see, to seize, to bear 
into a close recess a monster new as yet to my visual organs, 
was but a moment's work. As I dropped it on the sod, and 
stood over it, my frame dilated — fire was in my eyes — 
a tremor shot through every limb ; the swirl of my tail was 
terrible. But the instinct of my nature was presently upon 
me. I struck this talon into his sides — I darted the other into 
his head. I pinched him, I claw'd him, I squeezed him. I 
flung him into the air ; I caught him as he fell ; I dashed him 
to the earth, and rolled over him in transports of delight. But 
my sleep, my treacherous and affected sleep ! — To see, as I 
lay stretched upon the earth, and apparently with both eyes 
closed — to see the mummied mass give a shake, and distinct 
organs again emerge into a sort of shape — and then a timid 
glance exploring whether I am still at hand — but all appa- 
rently is safe: a step is made — the step becomes a walk, 
the walk a gallop : " erupi, evasi, I am out of his toils, I 
have fairly escaped," says the " wee beastie." ' ' Escaped V savs 
I, clearing unnumbered yards at a spring; ' no: escape there 
is none : did the earth open, I would follow you to its centre, 
and win a grim smile from Death by slaving you in his very 

disrespect, hut first, because at present I cannot command the time for so doing; 
and second, because, having shewn that there arc reasons for supposing that 
Mr. K. docs not always acknowledge the sources from which he borrows, I wish 
to see how far his doctrines are Original or otherwise, before I pronounce any 
opinion upon them. 



82 

presence.' And from such a sleep — snorting even in his 
dreams about optatives a , and aorists, and fundamental prin- 
ciples — my grimalkin, or rather my tiger, is now waking, 
and preparing to make a second spring. No, Mr. Kennedy : 
stop where you are a while ; there are other fundamental 
rules to be observed besides those of grammar ; and let us 
see how these have been observed in some of your dealings 
with me. 

In the Introduction to my ' Knights' I had occasion to 
refer at some length to those wonderful works of art for 
which the name of Athens has ever been and ever will be 
illustrious; but at the same time exposing the disreputable 
means by which she became mistress of those works of art. 
At p. 218 of the same play, after some remarks on ' the three 
statues of Pallas in the Acropolis, two of them chef-d'ceuvres 
of the immortal Phidias,' stood the following observations : 

' There are perhaps more references to works of art in the few 
remaining comedies of Aristophanes than in any other of the Attic 
writers now extant, and even in him the references do not much 
exceed the present, and those at Ach. 991. Pac. 616. PI. 385. If 
these matchless works found a place in Athens itself, they do not 
seem to have found a very prominent one in the minds of its in- 
habitants. [War and religion, the Pnyx and the Helisea, philo- 
sophy and the drama, these with good eating and drinking, (and 
the political economy of the ancients made the latter a serious busi- 
ness,) formed the staple thoughts of every Athenian, and left him 
apparently little time to think about the fine arts.]' 

a I cannot repeat too often, that in my edition of Aristophanes attention 
was meant to be directed to things rather than to words, not from any disregard 
to the latter, but because it was only within the last few years that the valuable 
political matter contained in the author had commanded attention, and because 
Greek words are a science in themselves, requiring not only a peculiar talent, 
to which I make no claim, but also an outlay in books, or ready access to them, 
which I could not command. I contented myself therefore in the case of ews, 
as in many other cases, with referring to works which I knew to be in every 
body's hands, throwing in some additional miscellaneous examples to the 
doctrines laid down in those works. 



83 

To this was subjoined a sub-note to the following effect : 

- A few references (on the fine arts) are also to be found in Plato, 
and one or two in the productions of that mind, which was fitted 
to embrace within it all ideas of a grand and magnificent nature. 
But Demosthenes (and to him I allude) must have surveyed the 
general splendour of Athens with the eye of a statesman, rather 
than of an artist, as one who felt that all within it must one day be 
as much his, as Macedon w T as the possession of Philip, and that ' — 

But it is unnecessary to continue the extract further. 

Xow r whatever the value of these remarks might be in 
other respects, could any one be at a loss to understand their 
general meaning? While ice are continually dwelling on 
the fine arts of Athens — eulogizing or imitating them 
— it was evident that the cleverest writers living at the 
period — and such writers best reflect the feelings of their 
day — thought little about them ; and I endeavoured to ac- 
count for the apparent indifference. The subject was at all 
events a curious one ; and how r does Mr. Kennedy treat it ? 
He selects from my two notes that portion only which has here 
been put between brackets, and then infers from it — what ? I 
have again and again thrown myself into the Dantesque arch, 
BO often requisite for comprehending Mr. Kennedy's meaning, 
and can come to no other conclusion, than that the inference 
which he himself drew, or insidiously meant that others 
should draw, was this : — that I was utterly ignorant that the 
fine arts ever flourished at Athens at all, and that my readers 
being in the same benighted state, it was necessary for him 
to make three quotations from Junius, ' De Fictura Voterum,' 
to inform us all as to the true state of the case. That I do 
not misrepresent Mr. K. as he has misrepresented me, let the 
reader judge from the remarks made by Mr. K. immediately 
on the heels of his garbled extract. 

' This note of Mr. Mitchell's would have been equally just if the 
drama had not been excluded from the fine arts/ 

<; 2 



84 

(What Mr. K. means, no effort of ( the arch' on my part can 
possibly extract.) 

Music was considered at Athens a necessary part of liberal educa- 
tion. 

(A multitude of notes had been inserted in my ' Clouds' as 
well as in this very play to inform the student on that point.) 

Sculpture and painting were cultivated there to an extent, and 
the former at least with a success, unparalleled in any city before or 
since : not even Florence in her best days being excepted. The fol- 
lowing three quotations are taken from Junius, De Pictura Veterum. 

(These may well be spared the reader). 

And it is worthy of remark that they presented Polygnotus of 
Thasos, after his paintings in the Pcecile, with the freedom of the 
city, — in those times (about 430 B. C.) a rare and signal honour. 
The student will now be able to judge for himself how far it is pro- 
bable that the Athenians had little time to think about the fine arts. 

Now, with the exception of the remark about Polygno- 
tus, for which Mr. K. gives no authority, which may or may 
not be true, and which, if true, would be a compliment of little 
value — for just about that period commence the charges of 
Aristophanes against his countrymen for the facility with which 
every worthless foreigner was becoming a denizen of Athens 
— I ask the intelligent and candid reader, what has all this to 
do with the general tenour of my two notes ? Had Mr. Ken- 
nedy read them so hastily that he did not understand them ? 
or if understanding, did he hope by a little garbling to make 
his readers suppose that I was a person of such/gross ignorance 
as he by this means makes me appear to be ? The reader 
may perhaps have laughed over an anecdote which Voltaire 
tells of a person, who, after experiencing a similar instance 
of obtuseness or dishonesty on the part of an opponent, and 
doubting what language could be brought down to such a 
person's comprehension, exclaimed, ' Vous etes un faussaire, 
un fripon ; je ne sais pas, si je rrfexplique / — yet little did 
I dream that an opponent of Mr. Kennedy's rank and class 



85 

would have recalled such an anecdote to my own mind. 
But this remarkable note of Mr. Kennedy's is not yet con- 
cluded. From the document appended to these pages, it 
will appear, that Mr. K. and myself have followed a different 
arrangement in discussing the plays of Aristophanes. What 
my object was in breaking a little through the chronological 
order, is clear enough. I had three plays of a decidedly 
political character to lay before the reader. Two of them 
afforded the means of looking into the two great sources of 
the Athenian democracy; the third offered an opportunity 
of surveying the results of such a government on morals, 
on individual happiness, and on national greatness and dura- 
bility. Need I tell Mr. Kennedy what those results were ? 
In my castigated edition they are bad enough ; in the original 
play, they are frightful. I wish not to press too hardly on 
antiquity ; but Mr. Kennedy knows as well as I do, that the 
original presents a picture of profligacy collected into one 
small space of ground more hideous than has ever since 
been congregated into the same space ; and that if the fires 
of Heaven did not descend to purge and clear the spot, the 
mercy of the Almighty acted more powerfully than His justice. 
And yet what remark does all this frightful exhibition elicit 
from the member of an order, which for piety, moralitv, and 
learning, has not, and I believe never had, its equal on the 
earth, and the character of which Mr. Kennedy was bound 
to maintain, as well as his own, in coming to a conclusion on 
such a subject ? This counterpart of Bottom, who ( roars lion' 
where a verbal mistake has been committed, winds up his 
note by thus ' roaring nightingale ' when the national cha- 
racter of as great a set of profligates as ever infested the face 
of the earth is to be weighed in the balance. ' Whatever 
may have been their faults, (and alas! even a friendly eye 
cannot fail to see them,) neglect of the fine arts was certainly 
not one!' If an intense study of Kuhner and Matthiffi leads 
to such moral paralysis as this, surely the sooner Mr. K. 
throws both into the fire, and betakes himself to studies more 



86 

appropriate to his sacred profession, the better for him. Our 
course now brings us to the far-famed 

CLOUDS. 

I did really believe that with the help of Wieland I had 
thrown so much light over some of the words of this drama — 
more particularly such words as fypovris, (jypovTLarrjs, QpovTL- 
{ecv, (jypovTLo-rripiov — that a small compliment might have been 
elicited from Mr. K. ; and a compliment from him in this 
department of letters would have been as ' manna thrown in 
the way of starving people.' But no : it is the old system, 

Purgandi, 

Seignandi, 

Percandi, 

Taillandi, 

Coupandi, 
and much of it done as usual by star-light. But first for a 
broad-day-light proceeding. 

108. tovtg)v yevov /xcu. 

The personal pronoun is here redundant. [M.] Translate, " become 
one of these for me." Mot is as redundant as the two last English 
words. [K.] 

A candid writer, which Mr. K. is not, would have said, 
' Mr. Mitchell has adverted to the frequent redundancy of the 
pronoun in this particular play. Of the numerous references 
which he has given in proof, this one is not perhaps strictly 
in point.' I notice this little passage merely to call atten- 
tion to the general animus of Mr. Kennedy's notes : with 
regard to pronouns of this kind, the student will do well to 
consult Bernhardy, p. 84-9. Post, p. 358. 

825. KCLTaTTeCppOVTLKa. 

* / laid it out on phrontism. [M.] Translate into English, ' I 
have thought it away. [K.] 

Mr. Kennedy, as usual, garbles and suppresses: but that is of 



87 

little consequence. On looking into Passow (where something 
within told me I should trace Mr. Kennedy b ), I find that excel- 
lent lexicographer translating by verstudiren ; I do not there- 
fore hesitate to adopt Mr. Kennedy's version, but with two pro- 
visos ; first, that the student, if he has the English term on his 
tongue, shall have my coined word in his brain, otherwise a 
world of genuine though local humour will be lost to him ; 
and secondly, that the word shall be pronounced according to 
that grammar of the voice, with which Mr. K. appears to have 
but little acquaintance, but which would oblige the actor, 
after playing a little with the first two syllables of the word, 
as if he were about to bring out the perfect tense of the verb 
KaTava\[<TKO), suddenly to evolve, amid roars of laughter, a 
fabricated word, for which a long train of previous ideas had 
excellently prepared his auditors. 

1155. ES y. S> KaKobaLfjioves, rt K&OrfcrO" hfiikrepoL, 
'H/xe'repa Ktpbrj T(ov crocp&v, k. r. \. 

* Bravo my c aco daemons , Socrates and Chserephon, against the 
world. 7 [M.] The words <Z KaKodaluoves refer to the spectators. [K.] 

Why Mr. K. italicises his own word have in the note pre- 
ceding, is best known to himself; and why he has here chosen 
to print my words as I did not print them, and, by such a 
masquerade dress, make absolute nonsense of them, must be 
equally well known to him. Before adverting to my note, as 
it really stood, and repeating my belief that the word KaKobaC- 
ixoves does not apply to the spectators, and that consequently 
the punctuation of the passage ought to be changed, let me 
be allowed a few words on the term itself, because, like 
those connected with the word (j)povrU, no small portion of 
the humour of the play depends upon it. It is almost unne- 
cessary to say, that the three principal characters in the 
1 Clouds ' are the philosopher Socrates — a once wealthy 
father, nearly ruined by a spendthrift son — and thirdly, 

b I mention a fart, hut admit that I hare no light to draw the inference I do 
from it. Mr. K. may have profited by "Dindorfs ' medifnndo perdidi.' 



88 

that son himself, connected on the mothers side with the 
highest families in Athens. From certain reports which 
have reached the paternal ears of the wonderful deceptive 
verbal powers possessed by Socrates, he evidently looks 
upon the latter as a sort of conjurer, who by some process 
of word-magic will be able to extricate him from the em- 
barrassments and debts into which the young man's extra- 
vagance has thrown him; and the latter is accordingly en- 
treated by his parent to become a member of the Socratic 
school, that by acquiring this mysterious magic of words, he 
may free both of them from their present difficulties. The 
young man spurns alike at Socrates and his school, and be- 
stows upon the whole establishment the contemptuous epithet 
in the text ; and what was the full meaning of that word ? 
Its general substance may be collected from a spot nearer 
home. Many years have not elapsed since the well-known 
Mr. Bentham, instead of submitting his labours to his usual 
redacteur, chose to appear before the world in his own pecu- 
liar phraseology, and the town was in consequence convulsed 
with laughter. There is every reason to believe that the phi- 
losophical language of Socrates, before it underwent the puri- 
fying hands of Xenophon and Plato, was occasionally as 
grotesque as that of Mr. Bentham. But the Athenian sage 
carried matters much further than the philosopher of Queen- 
Square ever did ; and to make the parallel somewhat more 
complete, the latter ought to have been seen walking about 
with the elite of his school, all without shoes to their feet, a 
flowing robe on their backs instead of a coat, and a Rouen 
bonnet on the head in place of the usual beaver. The 
neighbourhood would of course have deemed them men 
* born under an evil genius, and absolutely demented.' 
Such is the general meaning of the word ' cacodsemons,' which 
the young man applies to the Socratic school. Of that 
school, however, he finally consents to become a member, 
and thereby learns some legal cabbala, by which his father 
finds that he can cheat his creditors. ' To leap upon his 



89 

son's neck/ said the conclusion of a long note of mine, in 
which this cabbalistic term was explained, i and almost stifle 
him with caresses, to dance, to sing, and commit a thousand 
extravagances, are all the work of a moment. But in the 
midst of his transports Strepsiacles is not unmindful of those 
under whose tuition the valuable maxim has been discovered. 
u Bravo, my cacodaemons (eS y\ 2> KaKobai^oves) ! Socrates 
and Chaerephon against the world!" ' Suddenly,' it was added 
in a subsequent note, ' he turns to the spectators, and finding 
them coldly keep their seats, instead of rising simultaneously, 
and sharing in his transports, he breaks into a torrent of 
invective against them,' &c. &c. And now I ask, whether 
this is not consonant with the workings of human nature, 
and whether any thing is more common than for a person to 
have a word ironically retorted upon him in a favourable 
sense, which he had previously used in a bad sense, more 
particularly when the practical value of the word had been 
ascertained? The chief object of a verbal critic I think would 
have been to see whether the laws of the Greek language 
would admit of a vocative case after the exclamation tv ye, 
and of this two satisfactory instances may be given : Nub. 
1150. ev y , S> 7TafjL(3a(TL\eL "'Aiiaiokr]. Eccles. 241. tv y\ 2> 
ykvKVTa.Tr) npa£ayopa, roll Oe£ta>?. 

I39O. TL TjV €)((*)V TOV 7/770) 

Xoyov ere viKijcro) keyo)v 

TTJV fXrjTtp £)S TV7TT€LV \p€(i>V J 

Whoever has done me the honour to read my edition of 
the ' Clouds,' knows that one object of my notes was to 
iblish a close relationship between the Socratic school and 
Euripides, and to shew that the satire of the comedy pointed 
full as much at the latter as the former. 1 accordingly here 
asked, as I was entitled to do, 

' Had Euripides then propounded any peculiar doctrines, which by 
their tendency to lessen maternal dignity, tended also to impair 
filial reverence, and finally lead to such horrors as those mentioned 
in the text :' 



90 

With Brunck's assistance, I shewed that Euripides had pro- 
pounded such doctrines in his ' Orestes.' Mr. Kennedy pro- 
duces some similar doctrines in the Eumenides of JEschylus, 
and observes, 

' Mr. Mitchell must have overlooked these horrible lines, when in 
his elaborate eulogy on the Eumenides' &c. &c. 

I am not obliged to let Mr. K. into all my literary secrets, 
but I beg to assure him I had not overlooked them. I gave in 
my note what the text immediately required ; and I reserved 
the lines here adverted to in the Eumenides for an essay on 
the -ZEschylean Trilogy, which would have appeared in my 
Appendix to the ' Frogs/ had space allowed, and where they 
would have found a more appropriate place. I should have 
passed without notice this supposed overlooking on my part, 
but that I shall soon have to solicit the reader's indulgence 
for an overlooking which I cannot so well account for. Let 
us now proceed to the 

WASPS. 

372. fjL€fxvr](TO brjO' or iirl arpancts KXexj/as irore tovs d/3e- 

XlCTKOVS 

Lets aavrov Kara rod reCxpvs rayjm, ore Nd£os eaAco ; 

* lets. * Notare possint tirones lets apud Tragicos primam 
habere communem, ssepius tamen brevem.' Blomf. in S. c. Theb. 
p. 47. [M.] This note, which was written by Blomfield, upon the 
present participle of hj/lu, is applied by Mr. Mitchell to the second 
person singular of the finite imperfect, of which the first syllable is 
necessarily long. [K.] 

And could any person, not absolutely stone-blind from 
prejudice, have failed to see that my mode of putting the 
doctrine was only a compendious form of doing what 
Mr. K. has explained at so much length? Would not 
the entire difference of accent have shewn the youngest 
reader, possessed of the slightest power of combination, 
that a metrical difference might exist between lets and Uls, 



91 

and that the mark of elongation placed over the first was 
purposely done to call this difference to his mind? If 
Mr. K., as we before saw, has more than enough of ' windy 
wisdom/ he lacks much of that * wind-sped wisdom ' (r/z/e^xo'ev 
(ppovqfia), which, by a rapid combination of things, rushes 
instantly to what is required of it. 

Ahi quanto cauti gli uomini esser denno 
Presso a color, che non veggon pur I" opra, 
Ma per entro i pensier miran col senno. 

Infer. Cant. 16. 

It is evidently for a different reason that a writer must be 
cautious when thus dealing with Mr. Kennedy. If a thing 
is not put before him in the plainest form possible, his want 
of tact is sure to make him misunderstand it. 

511. ovtos oxlfoavelv lout avOpo&iros £~l rvpavvlhi. 

Mr. Kennedy, dissatisfied with my translation of this pas- 
sage, substitutes for it, ' This fellow seems to be buying 
fish with a view to a tyranny.' Mr. Kennedy's translation 
appears to me no better than my own, and both, I think, 
are sufficiently bad. What is wanted, the context ex- 
plains clearly enough ; the difficulty is to get such a construc- 
tion out of the preposition htl as shall chime in with it gram- 
matically. And first for the context. The poet is laughing 
at those fears so perpetually pervading his countrymen, lest, 
after all their precautions, the popular government should be 
upset, and tyranny, or rather absolutism, once more creep in. 
And how does he exemplify this disposition ? In his usual 
playful manner. An Athenian gourmand enters the fish- 
market. He sees on one stall a fish of the nobler and more 
expensive kind, and in the adjoining stall one quite the 
reverse. He buys the former, and the disappointed vender 
(supposing M to have the force of the French a la mode de) 

c When Mr. Kenned Tit .studies arc completed, he will he ahle to 

iuform us, whether the apt of that language, which Eiartung (I. 123 considers as 
the counterpart of the Creek preposition M, ndmits of such a meaning. I should 



92 

exclaims, f Here's a fellow ! He will not, as equal laws 
require, take the good and the bad together, but must needs 
have the prime of the market : is not this catering after the 
fashion of downright Absolutism V But will Greek con- 
struction give us that sense which the French one does? 
That in the infinite variety of examples and senses belonging 
to the preposition iirl, such an instance might be found, I 
think very probable, but not being able to furnish one my- 
self, I am content to take up with that dative of ZttI by which, 
according to the grammarians, combination and co-existence 
are expressed (Matth. §. 586). Among the various instances 
of this construction, furnished by Matthise, the following will, 
I think, satisfy the construction in the text. Eur. Troad. 315. 
€7rt bcLKpvaL = baKpvovaa. Or. 632. iirl <tvvvoicl=.(tvvvoov\ : l€vo5. 
Phcen. 1596. kit dbvvais = dbvMjjLevr]. By a similar mode w^e 
get dv/fco^eti;, to buy his fisli, iirl rvpavvibi = rvpavvevav, i. e. 
as an Absolute, Long as this note is, I must be allowed to add, 
that from the tenor of Mr. Kennedy's, any one would suppose 
that, instead of having received much information from me 
on the subject of the ancient o^ov 9 he was imparting infor- 
mation. My pupil's knowledge on the matter, however, 
being still imperfect, I inform him that the opson or relish 
was used at the wine-drinking as well as at the solid meal, 
and that Homer's feasts furnishing an onion for that purpose 
(II. XI. 629. KpopLvov, 7ror(3 o\f/ov) , my use of the term dessert 
was not quite so much out of place as he imagines it to be. 

598. e8o/xej> TavTrjv, k. r. A. 

* edo/xev, imperf. for present tense. See Matth. 505. [M.] 'This 
error,' says Mr. K., ' I had attributed to accident, but — ' 

Leaving Mr. Kennedy's 'but' to stand for the present, I 

shock his English ears (cf. sup. 86), if taking advautage of the English idioms, 
* to work upon an empty stomach,' * to drink port upon champagne,' &c. I 
were to translate literally, < to opsouize upon Absolutism ;' yet this I think 
would express the original ; and such little pedantries must occasionally be had 
recourse t>>, in explaining ancient author?. 



93 

answer, a candid critic would not only have attributed this 
mistake to accident, but would have explained how the acci- 
dent must have arisen; viz. that meaning to quote Matth. 
§. 506., where my general doctrine was contained, I by mis- 
take dropped upon Matth. §. 505., and so thought of ebofxev 
instead of ibtbofxev. Mr. Kennedy's principle, however, is 
not candour, but 

* Clysterium donare, 
Postea seignare, 
Ensuita purgare.' 

And if one palpable mistake does not answer the purpose 
of this ' liver upon syllables,' he tacks a second to it, and 
that is — 

' reseignare, repurgare et reclysterisare.' Moliere. 

Verily this doctor of mine is a dirty fellow, and will ' need 
much washing to be touched.' — Sams. Agon. 

68 1. Kq(f OVTOL fX€V bd)poboKOV(TLV KCLTa 7i€VTT]K0VTa TaXaVTCL. 

The prepositional error which Mr. Kennedy detected, or 
thought he detected, in my rendering of this verse, has 
already been discussed; but something, it will be seen, was 
left for after-discussion, which I now proceed to deal with. 
Among the references which I gave for my sense of the 
preposition Kara, was one from Isocrates, which began thus : 
ra9 be (irokeLs) k. t. A. On which Mr. K. remarks : ' The last 
example from Isocrates affords a striking specimen of the 
attention which Mr. Mitchell gives to the passages he cites. 
Had he only read the immediate context, he must have seen 
that the word to be supplied to the article is not 7roAeis, but 
rpi^peis.' True, Mr. Kennedy: and in another work, which 
you probably saw (viz. my Index Isocr.), you found the word 
TpLrjpecs supplied, and not 7roAa?. And now as to the animus 
of this remark. In my five plays of Aristophanes, there arc 
perhaps almost as many thousand references, among which 
Mr. K. has found one wrong, and that one rectified elsewhere* 



94 

That there are no others, I will not venture to affirm : but I 
do venture to assert, that if the reader should take the trouble 
to verify my references by the editions in which I read my 
authors, he will find as few mistakes as could well be expected 
in such a vast body of references. Does Mr. K. now turn 
upon me, as he perhaps will, and ask, why such super- 
abundant caution? I answer, first, because, knowing my 
incapacity to command attention by great matters, I en- 
deavour to be as correct as possible in small matters ; secondly, 
because, thinking it not improbable that some person, equally 
incautious and malicious as Mr. K., would make the remark 
which he has done, I felt it a matter of common prudence 
that the reply should be what is here confidently given. I 
now proceed to my 

FROGS. 

The weight of this play seems to have overpowered Mr. 
Kennedy, and accordingly, for the 560 pages, which he takes 
care to remind me that it contains, he can only muster spirits 
to repay me with four and a half; but no want of virus 
in them. 

90, 91. yovi\xov be iroirjrrjv av ov\ evpois en 
(rjT&v av octtls prj/xa yevvalov Xclkol. 

(tjtcov av. Though you should seek for it. To the examples given 
by Matthise (Gr. Gr. 598, b.) of av thus joined with a participle, 
add, &c. [M.] Both the one and the other av here belong to the 
finite verb, ftTwy being equivalent to ei Ctjtoitjs. Mr. Mitchell, how- 
ever, happens to be countenanced here by the authority of Matthiae, 
nostrum melioris utroque. I shall therefore proceed to consider the 
point at greater length, &c. &c. [K.] 

A writer, who knows somewhat more about these matters 
than either Matthiae or Mr. Kennedy, says, f Der Mann ist 
noch nicht aufgestanden, der aus dem blosen Sprachgebrauche 
die Bedeutung der Partikeln av und kIv zu entrathseln, und 



95 

ihren Gebrauch richtig zu bestimmen im Stand gewesen ware ' 
&c. (Hartung's Einleit. p. 51.) Very comfortable hearing 
this to the grammatical student, who considers how many 
learned tomes have been written on these two mysterious 
particles, and that by persons, who had only the ' Sprachge- 
brauche,' or common usage of the Greek language to guide 
them, but wanted all those accessories of Sanscrit, Gothic, 
old German, &c, which Hartung considers necessary for its 
elucidation. Whether Mr. Kennedy under similar circum- 
stances is an CEdipus destined to unriddle all their enigmas, is 
not for me to decide ; at present he must excuse me for 
saying, that having read more than once Hartung's elaborate 
essay on the particle av, his own enunciations on the matter 
seem to me little better than infants' prattle. 

289. ov fir} KaAets jjl 

tovOptoTT Ik€T€VG), k. t. A. 

* ov fir], sub. Spa. [M.] opa ov fir) fcaXeis is such Greek as an 
Athenian cobbler would not have used ; indeed, a decided barbarism. 
On ov prj, see Donaldson's New Cratyl. p. 480. [K.] 

What Mr. Kennedy meant by putting an Athenian cobbler 
on my back, is obvious enough ; and from remarks previously 
made, it is equally obvious, that from the political habits of 
the Athenians, an Attic cobbler was as likely to speak good 
Greek as Aristophanes himself, just as from French social 
habits, a French grisette may be pretty nearly as polished in 
her manners as a French duchess. If Mr. Kennedy has doubts 
upon the matter, let him go to that large body of ancient 
oratory which was written, not to be spoken by the composer 
himself, but by appellants or defendants in the Greek courts, 
who contracted with him for a speech, and lie will find that 
whatever the person's occupation or rank in life, the language 
is uniformly the same. The blush, therefore, which Mr. Ken- 
nedy meant to put into my cheek by using this term, I 
transfer to his own. With regard to the barbarism charged 
upon me — I am unacquainted with the New Gratylus, and 



96 

therefore cannot reason upon it ; but my acquaintance with 
Hartung would lead me to doubt whether it is so ' decided' 
a barbarism as Mr. Kennedy supposes. But be it the most 
decided of barbarisms, who better than my assailant might in 
candour have suggested, that my thoughts were perhaps 
here wandering a little, (why wandering, the note following 
this will in some degree explain,) and that for the following 
reasons? At v. 112. of my Acharnians, I gave Dawes's doc- 
trine on this formula, which Mr. K. must be well aware is no 
ordinary one : to Dawes's doctrine I added every passage in 
the Aristophanic remains, where the form occurs — this one 
among the rest — and for a more subtle elucidation of the con- 
struction than Dawes's, I referred the student to Elmsley's 
Medea, p. 251. In my Wasps, v. 415. 1 again gave the necessary 
references to Dawes and Elmsley, but did not, of course, collect 
the Aristophanic examples, having so recently given them in 
another play. Now, Mr. Kennedy, you have either read 
my five plays of Aristophanes with great attention, or you 
have not. If you have not, what right have you to come 
forward and arraign them, as you do ? If you have, where 
was your candour in not stating all this, and adding, as a 
candid critic would have done, that I was most probably 
thinking, at the moment, of another Aristophanic idiom of 
a somewhat similar nature, which does require opa to be 
understood, and which idiom also I had largely illustrated. 
You are again, Mr. Kennedy, upon the horns of a dilemma, 
and from the general nature of your proceedings, I know 
perfectly well on which / should place you. But, the gods be 
thanked ! the peck of dirt, which, it has been proverbially 
said, every man must consume in his day, is coming to a close. 

658. feet tls rjiiapTe acfyaXels tl Qpvviyov 7ra\at(TfjLa(rtv. 

Here we may fairly ask, why Mr. Mitchell, generally so prodigal 
of illustration, and just before so liberal as to treat us with two 
quotations from ' The English Historian of Greece,' about the dema- 
gogue Cleophon, suddenly becomes so niggardly as to refuse to 



97 

notice, even by a reference, the important historical allusion contained 
in this line. The omission will appear more extraordinary when 
we consider the bulk of this volume, and the fact that Thiersch, 
whose edition Mr. Mitchell must have had always before him, ex- 
plains the allusion at some d length. But there is another point of 
view which places this silence in a still more remarkable light. 
Mr. Mitchell has displayed great ingenuity in the extraction of oli- 
garchical opinions from Aristophanes. Had the experiment succeeded 
upon this verse, he might justly have been considered a master in 
the art. But the truth is, that here Mr. Mitchell felt diffident of 
his own powers, conscious that it would prove a delicate and ha- 
zardous operation ; and preserved a discreet silence. But if we praise 
his modesty upon this occasion, it must, I fear ; be at the expense 
of his candour. [K.] 

Now what all this means in particular, (what it is in- 
tended to signify generally I well understand, from previous 
insinuations of Mr. K., to which I shall presently advert,) I 
solemnly declare that I have not the most distant understand- 
ing. Mr. Kennedy's asseveration came upon me certainly 
by surprise, and notwithstanding his Italics, I turned to my 
' Frogs/ thinking that he was labouring under a mistake ; but 
I looked, and found a blank. That this slippery Phrynichus 
had slipped through my fingers, was certain ; but how or 
why, is almost as much a mystery to me at this moment, as it 
is to Mr. Kennedy. I can account for it only in one of two 
ways, neither of them much to my credit, but neither of them 
involving me in the consequences which Mr. Kennedy ob- 
viously wishes to fix upon me. In turning to my copy of 

d Thiersch's note is as follows : ' Phrynichum belli ducem, acerrimus qui 
fuerit Alcibiadis inimicus, intelligi, rccte monet schol. ad Lysistr. 313. Cujui 
partes quum multi uobilium secuti esscut, factum est, nteOfl in perniciem traheret. 
Cf. Thucyd. VIII. 50. sq. Clam enim cum Astyocho Spartanoruni duce egerat 
et proditor deprehensus, ut quadringentis respublica committervtur, efferent 
Jam vero chorus hie suadet, ut iis, qui Phrynichi partes secuti essent, facultas 
fiat se defendendi. Dc quatuor Phrynichis Ch. D. Beck, vocat Sluiter. Lect. 
Andoc. p. 117. Scholiast* enim h. 1. incertus est, utrum Phrynichus Cooticttl 
an belli dux intelligendup sit.* — This is Thiersch's note : and what is there in 
it, to which I could possibly object, or which I could wish to conceal ? and why 
then this puddle-storm of Mr. Kennedy's raising I 

H 



98 

Thiersch, I find a private mark set against the passage, from 
which I know that it was my intention to have incorporated 
his note among my own ; and I not only believe that it was 
so embodied, but that it was actually printed, and withdrawn, 
after it had gone through the press. And why withdrawn ? 
the reader naturally asks. If I am driven into egotistical 
details, it must in justice be recollected, that these details are 
not of my own seeking, and that the nature of Mr. Kennedy's 
charge leaves me no other means of meeting it but by such 
details. I believe then, but cannot confidently assert, that 
the note in question was withdrawn for the following reason. 
Having written out all my own notes for this play, and 
knowing that there existed several German works, calculated 
to throw far more light on it than I could do, I requested my 
publisher to procure those works for me from the continent. 
Having waited their arrival for some time, and finding they 
did not come, I concluded that they were out of print, and 
accordingly went to press without them. While the labours 
of the press, however, were proceeding, the volumes which 
I required dropped in at intervals upon me, and I was con- 
tinually obliged to stop the press, that I might peruse them. 
One of these results was to bring my volume, almost before 
I was aware, into that form which some Spanish writer e so 
happily describes ; 

So he took up his pen, 
Look'd about him — and then- 
Fell to scribbling again. 
Then he stopp'd to survey ; — 
Was there ought more to say ? 
There was text, there was note, 
Yet he wrote, wrote, wrote, 
Till by hook or crook 
Out there came a huge book ; 

huge indeed for the English market, but as for the German 
with which Mr. Kennedy twits me, — Boeckh the explicator 

e I believe, Yriarte ; but I speak and translate from very distant recollections. 



99 

of Pindar, and men of his kind, would hold it between finger 
and thumb, as I do Mr. Kennedy's pamphlet, and — think 
nothing of it. Another consequence was, the frequent can- 
celling of matter which had already gone through the press, 
and substituting what I thought of more yalue to the 
reader ; and I haye little doubt in my own mind that, under 
the operation of this influence, Thiersch's note was withdrawn 
after it had been actually printed. But why no reference in 
that case either to Thiersch, or to Thucydides at all events ? 
My answer may lay me open to a charge of negligence or 
forgetfulness, but certainly not to one of treachery or design. 
The reader of Thiersch's note will observe that he speaks of 
four Prnynichuses, the political intriguer in the text, whom 
it suits Mr. Kennedy's purpose to expand suddenly into a 
most important and magnificent personage, but who in fact 
acts only an involved part in a very intricate and obscure 
portion of ancient politics ; another, a tragedian of the same 
name, contemporary with Thespis ; the third, a comic writer 
who lived at the same time as Aristophanes ; and lastly, the 
grammarian of that name, whom the labours of Lobeck have 
made so well known to scholars. As much confusion exists 
in ancient writings about these four widely different persons, 
and as it was necessary for an Aristophanic reader to be ac- 
quainted with the first three, — the comic writer occupying a 
prominent position in the author's c AVasps,' and the tragic 
one occurring twice for mention in his comedy of the ' Frogs,' 
— the present impression on my mind is, that I meant to have 
brought all four together into one and the same 4 note at that 
second passage of the c Frogs,' where the tragic writer's name 
occurs, but that finding the tragedian, through a sudden 
ession of books, required a greater space than I had first 
allotted him, I abandoned the design of including the other 
three, and forgot that, under such alteration of purpose, some 
reference, however slight, was due to the person, who occu- 
pies a prominent place indeed in one of the choral odes of 
the drama, but whose name occurs no where else in the Ari- 

H 2 



100 

stophanic writings. This is all the explanation that I can 
give at present of the matter : if any thing is to be found in 
Thirlwall's Grecian History, which makes the omission of 
so much consequence in Mr. Kennedy's eyes, I am wholly 
ignorant of its nature ; for from various reasons, with which 
it is unnecessary to trouble the reader, I have never read a 
page of that history, though deserving, I have no doubt, all 
the encomiums bestowed on it by Mr. Kennedy. 

And thus much for the particular fact contained in this 
note. Let us now turn to its general spirit. When Mr. 
Kennedy here talks of f Mr. Mitchell's ingenuity,' I have 
little doubt that he means Mr. Mitchell's ' false colouring/ 
or even c mendacity.' Does the reader think that I deal 
harshly with Mr. Kennedy, or that I overstate the matter ? 
Let him judge between us. In a former page (p. 75) I re- 
served for future consideration the conclusion of a note of 
Mr. Kennedy's in which he endeavoured to fix a charge of 
I calumny ' on Aristophanes. That note concluded as follows : 
? Mr. Mitchell, in his long note about Lamachus, ought not 
to have suppressed this. Let him remember that there is a 
personage whom he is bound to prefer even to Aristophanes. 
'AfAfpo'LV yap ovtolv (pikoiv ocriov irpoTLixav thn Aahoeian.' 
The reader will perhaps see nothing here but a general truism, 
honourable in its promulgation to Mr. Kennedy's habitual 
modes of thinking, and well deserving the large capitals in 
which he invests it ; and so should I too, but that a pre- 
vious passage, which I had read, and read with tingling ears, 
led me to conjecture, why the words ttjv akfiQeiav are here 
made to stand a head and shoulders above their fellows. 
That passage stands as follows : ' Mr. Mitchell's notes are 
the more dangerous because they affect accuracy, and quote, 
almost at the outset, Porson's words, " nihil contemnendum 
est neque in bello neque in re critica :" a quotation which, 
coming from Mr. Mitchell, strongly reminds one of Arch- 
deacon Travis' profession, that " truth was the sole end and 
object" of his letters,' (p. 5.) Now combining these three. 



101 

remarks together, besides what has incidentally come before 
the reader, am I wrong in putting the interpretation which 
I do on Mr. Kennedy's use of the word ' ingenuity ' in the 
foregoing note, or in asserting that its general tendency is 
to impress the reader with an idea, that I had some fraudu- 
lent intention in withdrawing all notice of a person, whose 
name, as has been before observed, occurs but once in the 
Aristophanic writings, and whose political dealings were, 
upon the whole, of so intricate a nature, and spread over so 
wide a compass, that to a person generally conversant with 
Grecian history, a note characterising him as * a political 
intriguer of the day ' would have been almost sufficient ; 
while to a person not conversant with that history, a note of 
ten times the length of Thiersch's would scarcely have an- 
swered the purpose ? Mr. Kennedy, this is no trifling charge : 
the pages of my edition of Aristophanes do not fall very far 
short of two thousand : those of my Translations, which you 
profess also to have read, amount to 772 ; and how many 
more might be set down to my account in pages, to which 
my name is not affixed, I am not bound to inform Mr. Ken- 
nedy. That under circumstances to which I had occasion 
to allude in my edition of the ' Frogs,' viz. that my acquaint- 
ance with Aristophanes began from a mere accident, and 
after I had for some years comparatively laid aside what clas- 
sical literature I once knew — that under such circumstances 
many a verbal inaccuracy, and even some errors in reason- 
ing should escape me, was to be expected : that Mr. Ken- 
nedy with all his prying malice has been able to detect so 
lew of the former, is to myself matter of some surprise ; 
but as to the latter, not a single particular instance occurs 
to my mind, in which I am conscious of having misled my 
reader- ; and as to my general reasonings, — I can literally 
use the words of Cicero — ( Num fingo ? num mentior I 
ciqno refeRi* The day perhaps has been, when I saw the 
Athens of antiquity in the same or even a more favourable 
light than Mr. Kennedy himself; and if by any process 



102 

of reasoning he can restore to me my dream, he will do me 
no small favour ; but no : Aristophanes has taught me that 
it was a dream, and all the reasonings of all the Kennedys 
existing can never now convince me to the contrary. 

And now I would gladly ask, is it necessary to pursue this 
branch of the subject further? and may I not turn at once 
to those matters of a personal nature, which alone, as was 
observed in my opening page, formed an excuse for obtruding 
myself upon the reader's notice ? but no : Mr. Kennedy 
turns suddenly upon me, and exclaims, 6 And is this then 
your plighted faith ? But — abide your compact, or by the 
gods, I publish you for what you are, " false, fleeting, per- 
jured "—-a sneak, a coward, a poltroon.' 

M. {aside) How could I be so incautious ! but the compact 
has been made, and must be observed; and yet — after so 
much time already spent upon these trifles — 

Mr. K. (overhearing} Trifles indeed ! I admire your im- 
pudence. While you stood upon your defence, and had the 
matter in your own hands, you ' could tire the reader with a 
book of words ;' but now that my turn is come, all these 
things are c trifles light as air ;' and as for grammatical in- 
quiries But what is he muttering to himself? Something 

from Dante, 111 be sworn. 

M. (aside) 

' Not verdant there 
The foliage, but of dusky hue ; not light 
The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform'd 
And matted : fruits there are none, but thorns 
Instead, with venom filled.' 

Cary's Dante, Inf., c. 13. 

Mr. K. Still do you hesitate ? then away with words, and 
now for deeds. 

M. {aside) Di bonil what do I behold? his arms cross 5 
his hands are on the hilts, and double-edged and single-edged 
are at once both flaming before me. Whither run, whither 



103 

not .run, as Moliere has f it? But escape is cut off. I am 
caught in my own toils — my hour is come — I sink, I fall, 
I am dying, I am dead. 

Mr. K. Dead ! not you indeed ! we of the feline race — 
■ I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that lesson ' — deal not 
with death so hastily : no, no : ' you have bid me to a calf's 
head and capon, the which if I do not carve, say my knife's 
naught.' 

M. {aside) What can he mean ? but the two brands are 
cast aside, a quill is in his hands, and he writes and smiles, 
and smiles and writes, and touches his forehead, as if he said, 
like Dogberry, ' Here's that shall drive him to a non com' 
What is to become of me ? 

Mr. K. [writing and talking to himself) Dead ! no, no : 
ovh\v OavovTtov akyos ctarerai — and some little processes must 
first be gone through — the pinch, the squeeze, the scratch, 
the claw, — a sort of playing at life and death, before the final 
j)ounce is made, and body and spirit go different ways. 

M. (aside) Oh the voluptuary ! 

Mr. K. {talking and writing) To think that a booby like 
this, who does not know an aorist from an imperfect, should 
presume to invent a grammatical theory, and set himself up 
against the great Matthirc ! But if the Kennedy Theory — 
yes — the third stage is just transcribed — do not bring the 
sweat into him for his impertinence, it is not George John 
that has indited it. {Examining Ids MS.) Yes; that I think 
will do : and now to begin with him at the beginning. How 
did my Pamphlet reach you, Mr. Mitchell? (Looks again 
into the MS.) Yes : that I see is the preliminary step ; and 
to a connoisseur in these matters much depends upon it. 

M. (aside) What can he mean ? But there's that self-com- 
placcnt smile again ! odious wretch ! the * February face/ 
' all full of frost and storm,' was nothing to it. (Aloud) 
Reach me ? I presume, as all distant things reach one in 
this country — by coach, or mail, or post. 

' oil conrir ? oil uc pas coojrir? — l/jivttre. 



104 

Mr. K. Nonsense ! I mean in what outward form did it 
come ? 

M. And do you think I keep a register of such small 
occurrences ? 

Mr. K. {aside) He shuffles and evades ; but it's the first 
step in the Theory, and he must be brought to confession. 
{Aloud) Still silent ? "Well, if you will not remember, I 
must for you. 

M. (Aside) What can he be driving at? 

Mr. K. {pompously) The Pamphlet reached you — dare you 
deny it ? — in a brown paper parcel, wrapped up with parti- 
cular neatness — red tape used, if I recollect right, instead 
of string — but without note or intimation of any kind as to 
whence it came. Am I right ? 

M. It might be so. 

Mr. K. I tell you it was so. It is the rule. And who knows, 
but that fearing your publisher might not be up to the matter,, 
I so sent it myself? 

M. Well, and suppose it so came, what then ? 

Mr. K. What then ? Much. The form adds greatly to 
the zest on these occasions. From its light and airy aspect, 
you open it eagerly, thinking that something extremely agree- 
able must be within — a parcel of bank-notes for instance. 

M. Bank-notes do not usually come to me in that fashion. 

Mr. K. {aside) Nor perhaps in any fashion, so often as 
you could wish ; at all events, they shall not from your lite- 
rary labours — quantum in me est. {Aloud) Well ; if not 
bank-notes, something intellectually light and pleasant — a 
new brochure by Sidney Smith — 

M. {aside) Light enough in all conscience. 

Mr. K. The last number of Blackwood, Frazer, O'Malley 
the Dragoon, or some such trash ; instead of which — {aside) 
ah ! ah ! his reminiscences are coming over him — {aloud) 
something meets the eye, at sight of which — 

M. {aside) The infinite coxcomb ! but I see his drift, and 
will humour him a while. {Aloud) — the tongue cleaves to 



105 

the roof of the mouth, each particular hair stands on end, 
and the reader becomes rather a petrifaction than a man. 

Mr. K. (Aside) Yes, yes, I knew George John would do 
it. Nothing, I was assured, so sharp, and tart, and trenchant, 
had appeared for many a day. c And then that galaxy of 
stars ! a milky -icay for you and us — but for him — ' But my 
Theory has had the Gorgon-terror out of him — now for the 
sweat that follows. (Aloud) "Well, Mr. Mitchell ; the first 
painful emotions over — how much time shall we allow for 
them ? One hour ? 

M. (aside) Is it Jaques's dial or the Shrewsbury clock 
which admits of mirth, ' sans intermission,' for that period ? 

Mr. K. Two hours — three — four — I am willing to accom- 
modate you. What ! no reply ? Then I must answer for 
you. The first surprise has passed, and in your easy (?) 
chair, down you sit, as best you may, to read the whole con- 
tents. 

M. That I deny. 

Mr. K. Deny ? Impossible ! My Theory insists upon it 
— it is the rule on such occasions. Deny ? Fudge ! you 
know you read it instantly. 

M. I protest again, that I did no such thing. 

Mr. K. And why not, may I ask ? 

M. Because just then, if I must explain, I had doses of a 
different kind to deal with. 

Mr. K. Oh, I remember — something was said about cold, 
influenza, face-ache, tooth-ache — I forget which — well ! you 
did wisely not to take one dose upon the other — some judg- 
ment at all events shewn in that — (aside) Had the blockhead 
gone off at once, what had become of my office of despatch- 
ing him, as I now intend to do, by inches ? and which in the 
case of an offender like him, I pronounce to be an office at 
once useful, agreeable, and highly philosophical. 

M. (overhearing) Oh the Turk ! the merciless villain ! 

Mr. K. (contemplating through his glass) How quiet and 
subdued he looks already ! going off like a rule in philoso- 
phic grammar, which, burly and big at its first enunciation, 



106 

grows * fine by degrees and beautifully less/ till at last it 
subsides into something almost tantamount to nothing. I 
am fain to admit, that Kiihner's middle verb, notwithstanding 
the aids he gets from Sanscrit and Sclavonic, goes off after 
that fashion. But a truce with philosophising— I must turn 
to my Oella, or what s remains of him, and who in due time 
shall go off in the same way. Well, Mr. Mitchell, the aches 
and pains, whatever they were, are gone — the apothecary's 
dismissed, and you betake yourself in right earnest to the 
'Remarks.' They occupied some time, I presume, in 
reading ? 

M. What! thirty-two pages, some ten of which I have 
never read ? 

Mr. K. {aside) That last's a fib ! he has read them twenty 
times over, and each succeeding time with increased admira- 
tion of my grammatical powers. But I'll give him an extra 
pinch for that. {Aloud) Yes : occupy some time. 

M . As how ? by what process ? 

Mr. K. By what process ! As if you did not know, that 
time was not counted on such occasions by mere pages, but 
by interludes between — 

31. Interludes ! what interludes ? 

Mr. K. Starts — exclamations — < Remarks ' laid down — 
' Remarks' resumed — damp forehead — (aside) I see it break- 
ing out again — (aloud) Much call for sudaria, in the verna- 
cular, pocket-handkerchiefs — frequent pacings of the room — 
soliloquies interrogational — dubitative — expostulant — as — 

M. (aside) The mortal fool ! but I have my cue, and will 
help him on again. (Aloud) What could have led me into 
such a blunder? It must have been the compositor, the 
reader, the printer, the — 

Mr. K. (aside) He's coming right at last ; one more help, 
and he'll Q run into't, boots and spurs and all, like him that 
leap'd into the custard.' (Aloud) Perhaps the weather— 

M. Right — too hot. 

s * Oclla or what remains of thee,* &c. 

Chatter ton, 



107 

Mr. K. Too cold — {aside) What a profuse perspiration he's 
in at this moment ! 

1 The beads of sweat are standing on his brow, 
Like bubbles in a late disturbed stream.' 

Henry IV. 

M. Too wet. 

Mr. K. Too dry — (aside) * the lean earth is larded as he 
walks ;' but I must continue his state of thaw and dissolu- 
tion. (Aloud) Perhaps some accidental visitor, calling at an 
aw r kward moment — 

M. A plague upon such visitors ! 

Mr. K. The printer's devil — w r e must not suggest him. 

M. (despairingly) Oh no : he has been made far too much 
use of. But whose fault could it have been ? 

Mr. K. Oh, oh ! I have it now : (confidentially) it must 
have been the Old One himself, who seeing his darling demo- 
cracy roughly handled — 

M. (grasping his hand) Ah ! my friend in need — 

Mr. K. Cries, " Now will I turn this fellow's eyes asquint ; 
he shall read §. 405. where he ought to have read §. 406, — " 

M. He shall mistake an aorist for an imperfect, — 

Mr. K. " And then I'll clap George John upon his back, 
to rate him heartily for his blunder." (Aside) But what am 
I about? Absolutely putting arms into an enemy's hands. 
This slip must be corrected. (Aloud) Harkye, Mr. Mitchell; 
you have seen my lips moving, and perhaps think that I 
have been saying something : but it's a trick of mine to seem 
to be saying something, when in fact I say nothing. 

M. I have observed it more than once. 

Mr. K. (aside) Well, the first two stages of the Theory- 
seem to have done their work ; let us now try the third. 
(Aloud) Mr. Mitchell, do me the favour to read what I put 
into your hands ; and observe, no omission, no interpolation : 
I have somewhat else to do myself ; but my eye is upon 
you, and if I find you tripping — you will begin at the words, 
'The reading at last got through — ' (Mr- Kennedy takes vp 



108 

a copy of the ' Remarks/ and seems busily engaged with 
them.) 

M. {reads) ' The reading at last got through, and under 
such circumstances as have just been described, the patient's 
friends'— 

Mr. K. {aside) I have studied my Theory carefully, and 
never found this part of it to fail. 

M. {reading) * Friends, whom he has not seen for a long 
time previously, drop in as it were by common consent.' 

Mr. K. {aside) And yet he reads, as if the case did not in 
the least apply to himself ! Ah ! I see how it is : the poor 
man has no friends ; at all events none of the right sort, or 
they would have been more alive to his condition. As to 
the Theory being false, — impossible ! and yet his insouciance 
is strange, perplexing, mortifying. 

M. {reading) ' After a sort of Shandean conversation about 
the weather, the Pasha of Egypt, the fortifications of Paris, 
and other extraneous topics, one bolder than the rest breaks 
the ice : u You have, of course, seen this . . . thing," ' 

Mr. K. More emphasis on the word thing : the pause 
between this and thing right. But proceed as if I had not 
interrupted. 

M. (reading) ( " this thing that has lately appeared ?" — 
u Of course." " Did you ever read such stuff ?" — " Never." 
" The fellow ought to be horsewhipped." ' 

Mr. K. You need not turn your eye this way. I remem- 
ber no direction to that effect : hut per ge. 

M. {reading) c "Unquestionably." " Those remarks at pp. . . 
(N.B. Here the most pungent strictures to be named.) 

Mr. K. {aside) Aye, aye, he shall have them himself pre- 
sently. I am doubling down the leaves at this moment for 
the purpose. One, two, three, four, five . . . eleven to seven- 
teen I skip — they contain my own lucubrations : eighteen, 
nineteen — psha — what's the use of proceeding in this way ? 
the shortest way is to fold them all down at once {done accord- 
ingly). {Aloud) Proceed, my good friend, with your lection : 
u Those remarks at pp. — " 






109 

M. {reading) ' " Those remarks at pp. . . must, I fear, have 
given you much pain." Pain did you say ? I never read 
any thing with such particular pleasure !" ' 

Mr. K. More force on the word particular. It was italic- 
ised for that purpose. Proceed: we are drawing fast to a 
close. 

M. (reading) ' And here the patient's tongue, which had 
hitherto seemed under a sort of constipation, becomes loosened, 
and a world of explanations follows, as to what he knew 
ought to have been done, why it had not been done, and 
what in future would have been clone.' 

Mr. K. And all for the good of posterity — that's in the 
MS. I trust. If not, put it in. {Aside) I shall hit him 
there. 

M. {reading) ' And all for the good of posterity.' 

Mr. K. {aside) The obtuse blockhead ! He reads as coolly 
as if he did not feel the application. But he's on the rack, 
notwithstanding all his affected indifference. 

M. {reading) 'And to think that I should have been 
stopped in my career by such an ignorant — ' 

Mr. K. You may leave out the following nineteen epi- 
thets. 

M. {reading) ' Blockhead and coxcomb as this ! O that 
he were here before me ! would I not cleave into his skull, 
and see what his own brains are made of?' 

Mr. K. {clapping his ha?ids hastily to his head) Hold ! 
That last passage is a base intercalation. {Aside) Egad, it's 
well I have a stout trencher on my head, or who knows what 
this desperate, bloody-minded fellow might have been at I 

M. {laughing) Nay, nay, Mr. Kennedy, be under no 
alarm ; the contents of that skull are visible enough, without 
resorting to such a process. 

Mr. K. {sneeringly) And what may its contents be to your 
eye? 

M. Matter enough to form a respectable grammarian, but 
for a rival and extinguisher of Xenophon — 



110 

Mr. K. * A marvellous witty fellow, I assure you.' But, as 
Plautus says, hem ! aspecta ! video. 

M. And, as Plautus adds, sic rideant mei inimici — et Xeno- 
phontis, I would add, if I might dare to pronounce so great a 
name in the same sentence with my own. 

Mr. K. {aside) Oh that Attic Bee ! if it had not been 
for the slip about him, I should soon have demolished this 
fellow. But however, the game is now by compact in my 
own hands, and I defy him to elude me. (Aloud) Well, 
Mr. Mitchell, you have had a taste of my Theory, and now 
for the ( Pratique. 5 

M. The exposition of such few remaining blunders, I pre- 
sume, as my own observations left unnoticed, 

Mr. K. Even so : and that you may not here interpolate, 
or mar by false emphasis, I'll read as well as select them 
myself. As for your answers, you may give them in verse 
or in prose, in ancient or modern language, as you please. 
I am in high good humour at present ; for you cannot now 
slip through my hands as you did on former occasions, when 

your words, 
Domestics to you, serv'd your will, as't pleas'd 
Yourself pronounce their office. 

Henry VIII. 

No, no : I have you fast at present ; and therefore, as the 
French preceptors say, Attention ! 

{Mr. Kennedy reads from his 'Remarks' as follows) : 

Eq. 554. Tovt vnrcy\rr}<TavT av. 

* yjsav tangere, cnroy\rav abstergere. [M.] 
'The best writers' — {Aside) by the way, I ought to have said " Attic 
writers," for other writers did contract yl/deiv into n tyav, but I am 
dealing with a blockhead, who will not find that out, and therefore 
I will repeat it again — {Aloud) * The best writers contract \jsdeiv 
into yfriju.' [K.] {Aloud) Now, Mr. Mitchell, what say you to that ? 

h Cf. Passow in voc. and see notes to Buttmann's Gr. Gr. §. 105. Anm. 14. 



Ill 

M. Sospiro e sono x inteso. 

Mr. K. Aye, and high time it is that you were understood 
by others, and that you understood yourself, and it shall be 
no fault of mine if both is not the case ; (aside) but as to his 
sighing, the gods confound me, if I know whether he is 
sighing or laughing, for it sounds to me as much like one as 
the other ; but I'll try him again. 

(Mr. K. reads) 

Wasps 1039. (frrjcrlv re fi€T avrov 

T0ls T}7TLaX0LS €7TL)(€iprj(TaL, K. T. A. 

fi€T avrov 'post Cleonem. ' Bentley. [M.] Bentley does not trans- 
late fi€T avrov post Cleonem, but proposes to read /xer avrov, which 
would have that meaning. [K.] 

Again : What answer do you make to that ? 

M. Alto sosjnr, che duolo stringe in k Hui. 

Mr. K. (listening) That Hn came from the midriff; there 
can be no mistake in that : and yet, if asked the cause of 
so profound a sigh, I'll warrant he'd have the impudence to 
say, that it was pure grief at seeing a man, who bears the 
name of a gentleman and scholar, disgrace himself by writing 
such a trumpery note as the above. Well, well ; we have 
established a green w r ound : now for a little pepper into it. 
(Mr. Kennedy reads.) 

Clouds 964. ovb" cX/co/xei/off nepl Tvpayyiariov y\i(rxpauTi\oy€^€7nTpL7rTOv . 
* € r X/co/i€i/o9 = ZXkcdv, in jus trahens. [M.] That a good Athenian 
writer would have used cX/co/xei/o? by itself, or indeed with an accusa- 
tive case, to signify dragging another person to justice, I will believe 
4 by leisure/ The Latin translation would have saved Mr. Mitchell 
from this error. [K.] 

I listen again for your excuse. Your friend Dante, I guess, 
will not help you here, as he did in the case of the cookery- 
book, to 

that red hue, 
Which ofttimes pardon meriteth from man. 

i Dante, Purgat. c. 21. k Ibid, c. 16. 



112 

No blush can atone for such a blunder as that. 

M. Away with this monster, away with this pest ; 
To north or south bear him, to east or to west : 
He's my horror, my torment, my henbane, my curse ; 
My translation says l Hang him,' my l text something 
worse. 

Mr. K. The man's demented! His rhymes are none of 
the best ; and then to travestie a Greek tragedian ! — But it is 
satisfactory to see that the Sophocles haunts him as well as 
the Aristophanes. One citation more, and he is dead. 

No, Mr. Kennedy, I am not yet dead ; nor, for we must 
now put trifling aside, do I believe it to be in your power to 
accomplish that purpose, though no small degree of cunning, 
and trickery, and false candour, and even baseness, have been 
brought into the compass of a few pages to effect it: and 
why? to serve a purpose, if I mistake not, which you dared 
not openly avow. I had not read the first two or three pages 
of your pamphlet, before that object was as clear to my eyes as 
if I had seen it under your own positive declaration. Why did 
those pages begin with undervaluing Xenophon ? Because, 
in addition to all those beautiful and diversified writings, 
which have been already specified, he is the author, or re- 
puted author, of one, in which the vices of that form of 
government to which your own political tendencies evidently 
lean, though no actual words avow it, are almost as strongly 
pointed out in prose, as they have been elsewhere pointed out 
in verse. Why did your united anger and contempt next 
fall on Mr. Mitford ? because, whether Democracy exhibited 
herself in Greece or France, his powerful pen had been 
forward — whether with a perfect knowledge of the niceties of 
the Greek language or not, men of the world, and general 
readers, care but little — to warn against the ills ever attendant 
in her train. Why was your virulence then concentrated on 

1 airdytT, S> <f>i\oi, rbv 6\€0pov fAtyav, 
rbv KaraparSrarov. 

(Ed. T. 134*. 



113 

myself? For this, I believe, among other reasons; because 1 
happened to be the humble editor of a poet, whom you dared 
not attack in his own person, but in whose presence you well 
know that Democracy cannot stand and live ; so utterly has 
he stripped every meretricious covering from her. You 
may deny all this, till, as the homely phrase is, you are black 
in the face, and yet I am not bound to give credence to a 
single word that you utter : for the person, who insinuates a 
want of veracity on another's part, without coming to a 
shadow of proof, as you have more than once or twice done, 
has no right to be believed when his own honesty is ques- 
tioned. Such I believe to have been your chief reason for 
attacking me as you have done ; and the arts used to efFect 
your purpose are worthy of the purpose itself. 

You began, it is true, your work with commending 
some former volumes of translations of mine, of the poet I 
edited. And what thanks do I owe for that ? None. Com- 
mendation, for whatever done, is and ought to be dear to us 
all. ' The tired bull,' says a Hindoo drama, ' is refreshed, 
when the people say, " There goes the lord of cattle :" ' then 
why do I toss Mr. Kennedy's praises from me ? Because I 
know the insidious purpose for which they are placed where 
they are. Those translations had been sanctioned by the 
commendations of persons so infinitely Mr. Kennedy's bet- 
ters, that to add his tribute to theirs was to give but 
copper after pearls. But it served to take in the unwary; 
c Ah, the candid man,' said they ; ' see how he gilds the 
horns of the victim he is about to sacrifice !' Does Mr. Ken- 
nedy give me credit for extensive reading in the notes ap- 
pended to those translations, and think that I cannot, at a 
glance, see through such a shallow artifice as this ? And that 
I do not misrepresent Mr. Kennedy on this point, the spirit 
and tenour of every subsequent page of his c Remarks ' bears 
ample testimony. Those ' Remarks ' apply to a series of works 
comprising, as has been previously observed, nearly 2000 
pages, and the multiplied references in which must of them- 



114 

selves have shewn that they had been done in the sweat of the 
brow, that they contained the labour and toil of many years, 
and that, if no other credit was due to them, that of industry 
could not well be withheld. But not one word of commenda- 
tion of any kind ever escapes Mr. Kennedy. c Here is my brick,' 
says this copier of Hierocles's pedant, ' guess what the house is ; 
here is the foot, imagine the Hercules that stands upon it. 5 This 
trick has been played again and again : and as none but the 
meanest and least candid of critics will ever resort to it, so 
none but the shallowest of mankind will be its dupes. But 
Mr. Kennedy's small cunning knew that the majority of 
mankind are not wise ; and perhaps the additional thought 
came over him, that by discrediting me, he might indirectly 
discredit my author also. The idle reasoner ! Had Mr. 
Kennedy proved ten thousand grammatical errors against me, 
Aristophanes and Democracy would have remained where 
they are ; the one the most fearful and dangerous experi- 
ment which men can play in their game of politics, the 
other the best demonstrator which time has yet produced, 
of what must be the inevitable results of playing such a 
m game. Many of your other mean arts, Mr. Kennedy, have 
already appeared in the preceding pages : where my refer- 
ences told for me, you suppressed them; where they made 
against me, you as carefully inserted them ; a single mistake 
in reference was brought against me, as if such mistakes had 
been committed by hundreds ; you garbled my notes, and then 
founded charges on them with which almost every passage 
of my writings was at variance ; and when other things failed, 
you had your ' voces ambiguas,' and insinuations of dis- 

m It is gratifying to find, that whatever false notions may prevail in our own 
country respecting Attic Democracy, our trans-Atlantic brethren are comiug to 
a better knowledge of it. c The Democracy we pant for,' say the authors of the 
American Democratic Review (a monthly journal said to be very cleverly con- 
ducted), is not the fierce and turbulent spirit of ancient Greece, which was only 
the monstrous misgrowth of faction and fraud, still less — ' But what these writers 
do pant for, is little to our purpose. Any speculations about democracy may 
be safely indulged in a country where there is yet a wide orifice at the back 
to let out its more noxious ingredients. 



115 

honesty to scatter about, a baseness which has laid your 
head in the dust, and from which ten thousand times more 
learning than you possess will never recover it. 

But serious and multiplied as these offences are, I should, 
for the reasons specified in my opening page, have left them 
to be noticed by any one rather than myself, had you contented 
yourself with trampling my Aristophanes under foot, for 
in that undertaking my own private interests only were 
involved ; but when, with an almost savage glee, you endea- 
voured, by a quotation from n Ariosto, and a repetition of 
your former arts, to prejudice a projected edition of Sophocles, 
in which the interests of another were concerned, and which 
by more than one act of indiscretion on my part seemed 
much at your mercy, it became me at all events by an 
acknowledgment of error to protect those interests as well as 
I can ; and it is a source of deep regret to me, that other 
causes, besides one to which I have already alluded, have 
prevented me from so doing at an earlier period. 

Mr. Kennedy professes to have read nothing more of my 
first play of Sophocles than the Preface, but out of that 
he contrives to fix two charges upon me : one by torturing 
my words to a sense which they do not strictly bear, the 
other by garbling and suppressing, and then bringing my 
words to a sense which he chooses to make them bear ; in 
both cases, I readily admit, from my own language not having 
been so accurately worded as it ought to have been. With 
regard to his first insinuation, I did not take up an edition of 
Sophocles by way of pastime. The real case was this. The 
reader of my first five plays of Aristophanes must have seen, 
that whatever their other defects, they must, from the nume- 
rous references in them, and the variety of reading im- 
plied in those references, have been a work of great toil and 
labour ; and if he looks to the document appended to these 

n Quello che non si sa, non si de' dire, 

E tanto men, QUANDO ALTRI N' HA A PATIRE. 
So printed by Mr. K. 

I 2 



116 

pages, he will see that labour equally arduous was implied 
in the two which still awaited me. Mr. Kennedy may be 
of that hardy frame, which the toils of scholarship so impera- 
tively require, but I am not ; and indications not to be 
mistaken told me, that if I did not drop my two remaining 
labours altogether — -at all events on the scale on which I had 
at first projected them — some occupation of a lighter kind 
would in the interval be desirable. It was on expressing 
some wishes to this effect, that, instead of much humbler 
work, which my own wishes suggested, I was met by a 
request to conduct an edition of Sophocles, and that on so 
small a scale, that certainly, after my labours with Aristo- 
phanes, the undertaking might comparatively have been 
characterised as pastime; but as I for some time declined 
this latter proposition, and adhered to my former wishes, 
it was with thoughts fixed on the latter, and not the former 
of these two kinds of occupation, that I made use of an ex- 
pression, which Mr. Kennedy, with his wonted ingenuity, has 
turned to his own purpose. With regard to his second 
charge, viz. that I represented 6 the language and construc- 
tions' of Sophocles to be ' usually simple and easy' — thereby 
subjecting myself to long references from Porson and Her- 
mann, to shew me that such was not the case — all this involves 
a little misrepresentation on the part of Mr. Kennedy. My 
words were, ' simple and easy as the language and construc- 
tions of Sophocles usually are, it cannot be denied that in the 
following drama many are found which are neither one nor 
the other.' That these words, though more qualified than 
Mr. Kennedy's, are not strong and stringent enough, I 
readily admit ; and I can add, in all sincerity, that at the 
time they were before me, I knew them not to be so. How 
could it be otherwise ? at the very time I used them I was 
engaged in collecting the most difficult of those constructions 
together, with a view of seeing how far they might be sepa- 
rated into classes, and modes of discrimination applied to 
them which might make them less difficult to the student. 



117 

Then why, knowing all this, did I not make my expressions 
stronger, and apply to the whole of the Sophoclean dramas 
what had here been limited to a single play ? If I must 
tell the plain truth, it was because so many alterations had 
been already made in that Preface, short as it is, to meet the 
wishes of others, and so much had previously occurred to 
harass and perplex me with regard to the undertaking alto- 
gether, that an expression was allowed to escape, which cer- 
tainly in calmer moments would not have been permitted so to 
do. I really know not how to apologize sufficiently to the 
reader for bringing such matters before him ; but as the conse- 
quence of those harassments and perplexities has been to place 
my first play of Sophocles before him in a shape which leaves 
me much at the mercy of an assailant not much inclined 
to shew it, I must be allowed, in as few words as possible, to 
shew what those harassments and perplexities were. 

The edition of Sophocles entrusted to me was, as has been 
already shewn, to have been on a small scale ; my engage- 
ments, in fact, almost limiting me to a certain number of 
pages in each play ; and I certainly commenced my task with 
the fullest intention of abiding strictly by the rules laid down 
for me. But the reader who knows any thing of literary 
enjoyments (sorely not the least keen and vivid belonging 
to our nature), knows how weak are all such resolves, when 
any train of new, or apparently new, thought comes be- 
fore the mind, and with what recklessness of consequences 
we are apt on such occasions to follow the pursuit wher- 
ever it may lead. Now it was while investigating those 
Sophoclean phrases and constructions, which Mr. Kennedy 
seems to think I hold so cheap and easy of solution, that 
not only did such new trains of thought come across me, 
but that I was led by them into further investigations of 
those Sacred Writings, any illustration of which is to me 
of infinitely more value and gratification than that of 
classical literature, and both which it appeared to me 
could, by carrying out my thoughts to their full extent, be 



118 

brought into closer connexion than they had ever yet been. 
Was it in human nature to resist such a temptation? It 
certainly was not in mine ; and the consequence was, that — 
to the discredit of my judgment in some sense as I must here 
admit — not only did a considerable number of notes find their 
way into the work, not quite adapted to the class of students 
for whom the publication was originally intended, but a large 
Introduction became necessary, to explain on what principles 
those notes had been framed. And now it was that I became 
sensible of the awkward position in which I had placed both 
my publisher and myself by the well-intended, but indiscreet 
ardour with which I had been led away. To place all the 
results of these inquiries before the public was incompatible 
with his interests and the general object of the undertaking; 
to omit the Introductory matter, till it could, with two or 
three other subjects of some importance connected with the 
Sophoclean Drama, be published in a separate form, was a 
determination involving much awkwardness and misconstruc- 
tion ; but my publisher having, at my desire, put the whole 
matter into the hands of two gentlemen of the University — 
personally unknown to me, but in whose talents and judgment 
I placed the utmost confidence — it was of two evils thought 
the least to pursue the course which was taken on the 
occasion. Now whatever other use Mr. Kennedy may have 
made, or may be making of these ' untoward ' circumstances, 
I feel confident from his dealings with my Aristophanes, 
that he will eagerly avail himself of one of my notes for 
purposes of depreciation, viz. that long one with which 
the play concludes. Every person knows that the In- 
troductory matter to a work is that, which if not last 
written, is always last printed ; and therefore when I found 
my Introduction was not to make part of the volume, I 
was anxious that that note might be suppressed : first, be- 
cause without the Introductory matter, it was in itself scarcely 
intelligible ; and secondly, because without the explana- 
tions given in that Introduction, even its moral tendency 



. 119 

might be somewhat questionable ; but I was informed that 
the sheet had in technical language been worked off, and that 
consequently my wishes could not without much disadvantage 
be complied with. What handle my acrimonious critic may 
make of all this, I have yet to learn, but that he will not let 
it pass unheeded, the tenour of two or three of his notes on 
my Aristophanes, to which I have not thought it necessary to 
call the reader's attention, fully convinces me. One only of 
those notes concludes any thing against me which gives me 
the least concern ; and whether it became my reverend assail- 
ant to drag a quotation into notice — and nothing more than 
a quotation was involved in the matter — which, from its diffi- 
culties of dialect and construction, not one young man in a 
hundred would have read, or if he had read, would have 
understood, it is not for me to say ; but I do certainly think 
that his culpability in this point far exceeds my own. It is the 
highest of gratifications to me to be able to say, that parents 
of his own order and profession, and of far higher reputation 
in the world for erudition than himself, have expressed to me 
their satisfaction that they could now read Aristophanes with 
their children ; and if I added, that even prelates of the 
highest rank have condescended to something like a similar 
approbation of my labours, what disgrace is it to them, ex- 
cept that, as far as I am personally concerned, their kindness 
has much overstepped their judgment? If St. Paul, by his 
quotations °, acknowledges himself to have been a reader of 
the comic poet Menander ; and if St. Chrysostom is generally 
understood to have slept with an uncastigated edition of 
Aristophanes under his pillow, why should bishops or even 
archbishops be grudged a moment's relief from most mo- 
mentous and incessant cares, by canting an eye over a casti- 
gated text of the same great philosophic satirist ? To turn 
from such friendly and candid readers to the hostile and 
uncandid Mr. Kennedy, is not very agreeable, but my deal- 

° i Cor. xv. 33. 



120 

ings with him are,, to my inexpressible relief, now drawing 
to a close. 

Mr. Kennedy concludes his pamphlet with a quotation 
from Ariosto, which he evidently meant to be as painful 
to my feelings, as the Greek quotation in his titlepage 
was intended to be an insult to my understanding. Long 
before I saw Mr. Kennedy's quotation, my publisher had 
reason to know, that I wished him to be as little a sufferer 
as possible from my indiscretion in making his work what it 
was not originally intended to be ; and of his kindness in 
bearing up with that indiscretion it becomes me to speak in 
the most explicit terms. And so much for Mr. Kennedy's 
Italian motto. I too can quote Ariosto ; and from the same 
canto of the illustrious poet, from which Mr. Kennedy's own 
citation is made (C. XXXII. i.) > could extract something 
about * a sharp and venomous tooth/ which would not be in- 
applicable to his dealings with me ; but I prefer taking leave 
of the subject altogether with a portion of that stanza which 
immediately precedes Mr.Kennedy's own quotation, because I 
know that in the spirit of that stanza this little matter between 
himself and me will eventually be decided. 

■ A me non par, che ben deciso, 
Ne che bien giusto alcun giudicio cada, 
Ove prima non s' oda quanto neghi 
La parte, o affermi, e sua ragione alleghi.' 

Ariosto, Cant. XXXII. st. 101. 



In the Press. 
THE ACHARNENSES OF ARISTOPHANES, 

ADAPTED TO THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES, 

BY 

T. MITCHELL, A.M. 

LATE FELLOW OF SIDNEY-SUSSEX COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 



IF the plan, on which the edition of this play has been formed, 
should be found satisfactory to those learned persons, to whom the higher 
branches of education in this country are committed, it will be followed, 
at intervals, by similar editions of six other plays of Aristophanes ; the 
Wasps, (as far as the conclusion of the Parabasis,) the Knights, the 
Clouds, the Frogs, the Birds, and the Plutus. Four only of the 
remaining dramas of Aristophanes will then remain unedited ; but as 
opportunities will offer for engrafting large portions of these (generally 
accompanied by metrical translations) into the notes of the plays above 
named, it is hoped that this plan will be found to embody all that is 
really valuable in the author, divested of those deformities, which have 
hitherto prevented him from being a subject of general perusal. 
The Chronological order of the plays has been slightly disturbed for 

the following reasons : as the ' A (.-Marxians ' affords an opportunity of 
looking into the LEGISLATIVE A.88EMBLIE8 of the Athenians, and the 
1 Wasps' is exclusively (k-votcd to an examination of their JUDICIAL 
SYSTEM (the two pillars on which the whole political fabric of Athens 
rested, and without a full knowledge of which, all views of her Constitu- 
tion must necessarily be superficial and imperfect), it has been thought 

advisable to publish these two plays previously to the Kmciits, which 
may be considered as the re-ults of Ik r endeavours to form such a system 

of government, as should ensure what every State is bound to provide 
for its component members, the greatest share of individual freedom and 
security, compatible with the genera] happiness and welfare of the whole. 
These three plays will thus form a BUbjed complete within itself, and 
serve to give that view of the POLITICS of Athens which the CLOUDS 
present of her PHILOSOPHY, and the FROGS of her Drama. 

K 



122 

In these editions all illustrations of the author's text (which with 
little exception will 'be that recently adopted by Dindorf in his Poet^e 
Scenici) will be primarily derived from the author himself : every 
formula will be explained, where possible, by some three or four parallel 
examples ; and in more important cases, almost all other passages will be 
pointed out in which idioms of a similar nature are to be found in the 
poet's writings. When that has been done, some little attempt will be 
made to adopt the references to the time or the peculiar frame of mind, 
under which the author's respective compositions appear to have taken 
place. The earlier plays of Aristophanes shew a mind brooding not only 
over the great deeds, but also over the great works of literature, which 
had preceded his own period ; and where opportunity offered, elucidations 
of his text have accordingly been preferred from the writings of Homer, 
Hesiod, and Pindar, and from such fragments as remain of the works 
of Archilochus, Alc^eus, Solon, Simonides, Tyrt^eus, Theognis, 
&c. The remains of the three great Tragedians will then demand and 
receive the most minute attention. As the publication proceeds, illustra- 
tions will be sought from the school of Aristotle, and from the writers 
of a still more recent period, whose works deserve attention not so much 
from any intrinsic merit in their conception, as from the colour of their 
phraseology, which has been so frequently borrowed from the composi- 
tions of anterior ages. The subdued tone and better morality of the 
Plutus mark it out as the fittest place for more general illustration from 
those Sacred Writings, before which the loftiest compositions of 
antiquity were eventually doomed to bow their heads, and without occa- 
sional reference to which, the pursuit of Classical Literature may be said 
to lose its best and most legitimate object. 

This plan of illustration obviously rests on too narrow a basis to be 
exclusively adopted, and large departures will be made from it, more 
particularly in the following instances. As the writings of Lucian and 
Plato bear evident tokens, that the first of these authors had formed 
himself almost exclusively on the Comic Poet of Athens as his model, and 
that the latter seldom lost complete sight of him ; every fair opportunity 
will be seized of exhibiting such coincidences of thought or expression, as 
are to be traced in the respective compositions of these three great masters 
of wit, eloquence, and satire. From the general political tendency of the 
Aristophanic writings, a similar exception will be rendered necessary in 
favour of the Orators of Greece, whatever the period at which they 
nourished. To these invaluable remains of antiquity continual references 
will be made ; and from the Editor's familiar acquaintance with them, as 
well as with the works of the two authors above mentioned, he may be 
permitted to express a hope, that no passage in their writings, calculated 
to throw light on the language or opinions of the Comic Poet, will fail to 
find a place in the present projected publication, before it is brought to a 
close. To these exceptions must be added a large body of quotations, 
ostensibly introduced as remembrances of some metrical or idiomatic 



123 



peculiarity, previously explained ; but virtually for the purpose of ex- 
hibiting the great moral or political truths contained in them. Under 
this class of notes will be found, besides many beautiful extracts from 
the prose writers of Greece, much of what has been thought most valuable 
in the collections of Stob.eus, Brunck, and Walpole, together with 
the most admired fragments of Menaxder, Philemon, Axtiphaxes, 
Di phil us, &c. Lastly, no legitimate opportunity will be omitted of 
leading the young student's mind to the consideration of difficult or im- 
portant passages in the Sacred Writings, more particularly such as 
seem susceptible of improved translation, as the case may seem to re- 
quire : and the exception thus made, accompanied by remarks more or 
less diffuse, will also be extended to the works of the great Jewish 
Historian, Josephus. 

The notes, such at least as do not previously exist in the learned 
languages, will be in English ; and besides ample explanatory matter 
from the older commentators, will be found to contain considerable in- 
formation, derived from sources, not usually accessible to young students; 
such as the writings of Boeckh, Miiller, Wachsmuth, Kruse, Hudtwalcker, 
Schomann, Giambattista Vico, the Attisches and Rhenisches Museums, 
&c. &c. 

Sensible as the Editor is of the many imperfections which must 
belong to an undertaking so varied and extensive in its nature, he yet 
allows himself to hope, that it may be made a foundation for the more 
general perusal of an author, the most valuable perhaps of all whom an- 
tiquity has bequeathed to us ; furnishing, as his writings do, such fre- 
quent means of looking not only into the practical business of life, but 
of prosecuting inquiries into the most important subjects which interest 
and occupy the mind of man — laws — politics — philosophy — morals — and 
religion. 



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